For those who aren’t zombie inclined, World War Z is the novel written by Max Brooks, the son of the very talented Mel Brooks of Spaceballs fame.
As a best-seller, it was optioned by Brad Pitt’s production company Plan B. Of course, the movie is slated to star Pitt, and will be released next December, right before Christmas on the 21st.
Obviously, we don’t normally associate zombies with Christmas, and as Deadline reports, Z will also be facing some pretty tough competition for your box office dollar, going up against the first installment of The Hobbit on December 14, and Life of Pi on the 21st.
The Lone Ranger was also going to be released on the 21st, but Disney just cancelled it.
Meanwhile, Quentin Tarantino’s slavery epic – Django Unchained – comes out on Christmas day.
As Deadline notes, several studios recently set release dates for a number of long-awaited sequels, including The Hunger Games (November 22, 2013), The Amazing Spider-Man (May 2, 2014), Iron Man 3 (May 3, 2013), Thor 2 (July 26, 2013), The Smurfs (August 2, 2013).
Usually when blockbusters pick release dates, it can be a big game of chicken about who’s going to back out first.
When a big enough movie plants their flag, like Avatar, no one dares release anything on the same day. And as we’ve seen with the two competing Snow White films, the rival studios are relishing the showdown.
Funny enough, one of the big tent pole dates of the year used to be the worst day you could release a movie, Memorial Day, which is when Star Wars actually launched.
When the film exploded, Fox debuted Alien several years later on Memorial Day for superstitious reasons, and, well, the rest is history.
