Army of the Dead Director Zack Snyder: A Zombie Tiger “Just Makes Sense” in Undead Las Vegas

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Especially if it's a zombie outbreak contained to Sin City, where Scott Ward (Dave Bautista) and his ragtag crew of experts must brave an undead army — and a roaring zombie tiger — to pull off a $200 million heist. In Zack Snyder's Army of the Dead, the Justice League filmmaker unleashes a zombie tiger (a ziger?) named Valentine that Martin (Garret Dillahunt) calls "crossing the line." But the zombified Valentine became the Strip's most popular big cat since Siegfried & Roy when Netflix debuted the action-packed trailer for Army of the Dead, the director's first zombie movie since 2004's Dawn of the Dead:

"I guess we knew, in a way, Valentine was gonna be a star. It was me [who came up with the zombie tiger]," Snyder told Beyond the Trailer. "I think we had a zombie tiger in there for a long time, I think it was one of those early ideas. We knew we wanted to do zombie animals and so, I thought, 'For sure, it just makes sense if you're gonna do Vegas.'"

Valentine isn't the only alpha taking a bite out of zombie-infested Vegas: the city is crawling with "Alphas" and "Shamblers."

"Always in this concept, it was this idea that we would evolve the zombies or there would be a hierarchy, there would be some sort of [organization]," Snyder said. "You'll learn in the movie the 'why' of it because it's very specific about why certain zombies are 'Shamblers,' and certain zombies are 'Alphas,' it's very particular."

Snyder added: "But the Alphas, I sort of think of them like wolves or pack animals that can work as a team. Zeus [Richard Cetrone] is their main guy, and the Zombie Queen [Athena Perample] of course, they have this kind of primitive way of communicating. I'm not even sure how it works, but it's very much from the animal kingdom. They're one with nature if you will."

ARMY OF THE DEAD takes place following a zombie outbreak that has left Las Vegas in ruins and walled off from the rest of the world. When Scott Ward (Dave Bautista), a former zombie war hero who's now flipping burgers on the outskirts of the town he now calls home, is approached by casino boss Bly Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanada), it's with the ultimate proposition: break into the zombie-infested quarantine zone to retrieve $200 million sitting in a vault beneath the strip before the city is nuked by the government in 32 hours. With little left to lose, Ward takes on the challenge, assembling a ragtag team of experts for the heist. With a ticking clock, a notoriously impenetrable vault, and a smarter, faster horde of Alpha zombies closing in, only one thing's for certain in the greatest heist ever attempted: survivors take all.

Starring Dave Bautista, Ella Purnell, Omari Hardwick, Ana de la Reguera, Theo Rossi, Matthias Schweighöfer, Nora Arnezeder, Hiroyuki Sanada, Tig Notaro, Raúl Castillo, Huma Qureshi, Samantha Win, Michael Cassidy, Richard Cetrone, and Garret Dillahunt, Army of the Dead releases in select theaters May and on Netflix May 21.