Genre: Zombie/Action
Premise: Humans have found a temporary vaccine that makes them invisible to the zombie enemy. Now they just need to eradicate them with a new biological weapon, a weapon the humans are finding out might make their enemy even more dangerous.
About: For a good year there, David Fincher really wanted to direct World War Z 2 with his buddy, Brad Pitt. It would’ve been the biggest film he’d ever made. For whatever reason, though, Paramount kept waffling. In retrospect, it seems ridiculous to me. Being the smallest of the studios, you’d think Paramount would jump at the chance to trot out a David Fincher zombie movie starring Pitt. I guess they couldn’t make the numbers work though. At least for now. Paramount doesn’t own much flashy IP so you gotta think this is going to get made at some point. I’m sure Fincher would be open to it so just make the call, Paramount!
Writer: Dennis Kelly
Details: April 5, 2016 draft (123 pages)
The original World War Z project went through some interesting iterations. The book the film was based on followed the aftermath of a zombie outbreak. It was a unique take on zombies, to say the least, since it didn’t have zombies in it. It was more about the investigation into how the outbreak happened and who was responsible.
I remember reading an early draft of the script that was loyal to the book and thinking, “Wow, they are taking a gigantic risk making a zombie movie that isn’t about zombies.” The people over at Paramount must’ve agreed cause they ditched that take and went back in time to cover the exciting part – the actual zombie world war!
Mileage varied on whether that film was good or not but I liked it. I especially liked Brad Pitt’s scarf. It’s up in the air as to whether Paramount will ever get back in the World War Z business. Let’s see if they’re overlooking a surefire hit.
Gerry is back! (Gerry is Brad Pitt by the way – points for whoever knew that). The humans have taken a major step in defeating the zombies (called “Z”) after Gerry was able to secure a vaccine in the last film that made humans invisible to zombies by mimicking cancer. The Z only want healthy hosts so they ignore anyone who’s using the “camouflage,” which lasts for about a day before you can use it again.
The sucky part is that there are still Z everywhere. They’ve taken over almost every major city. The humans need a way to fight them and that’s come in the form of something called E29, a biological weapon of sorts that, when sprayed on Z, makes them kill each other. Doctor Morel is putting the finishing touches on the weapon in Geneva. Gerry just needs to grab it from her.
So he flies to Geneva, where everyone now lives underground in the former Large Hadron Collider. Millions of people live down here because the entirety of Europe has been overrun by Z. Gerry can’t help but wonder as he heads to the medical center… “What if someone down here gets infected?” Yeah, we’re thinking the same thing, Gerry.
Once they get to Morel’s office, they find out she’s gone. Locked up shop and vanished. They then break into her lab only to find numerous scientist Zs in there. They need to find out what happened so they all inject themselves with the camouflage and walk inside. Except the Zs don’t ignore them. They attack them!!!
Gerry runs out of the lab and the infection starts spreading VERY FAST. Everyone is getting bit and turning instantly. Soon, tens of thousands of zombies are blocking out the side exits. Gerry is forced with a few others to go DEEPER inside the Large Hadron Collider. They eventually find a shaft that gets them topside, but the damage is already done. This place is toast.
Gerry meets up with his air team and now it’s off to Singapore, where it’s said that Morel is. Gerry gets to the outskirts of Singapore where a rag-tag team of humans is holding Morel hostage and Gerry is able to ask her what the eff is going on! She concedes that E29 doesn’t work. It reverses the camouflage, which is why the Zs don’t sense it anymore. Oh, and there’s a new threat. The Zs have figured out how to transmit the disease THROUGH THE AIR. I mean, WTF!?? As if they didn’t have enough to worry about.
To make matters worse, they need to get to a local UN base on an island, and the only way there is through downtown Singapore, a former city that now houses 5 millions Zs. These Zs haven’t yet been infected by Morel’s faulty biological weapon, which means our team can still walk through the city worry-free, since the camouflage works on them. The only issue is that everyone in the group is already at the end of a previous camouflage cycle. So they can’t re-inject it. They just have to hope they finish their walk before it wears off.
The new plan is to meet up with a second scientist who may know how to counteract the faulty E29. That plan is put in jeopardy, however, when Anna, Morel’s daughter’s, camouflage wears out. Now they have to hurry to the pier that will get them to the island, all without 5 million hungry zombies devouring them. I’m hoping for the best. But it sure doesn’t look good for our tiny team of Singapore sightseers.
Let’s start off by helping the beginners in the audience.
Lesson 1: One of the simplest ways to start a story is to give your hero something they want. That will set them off on a path of action, and the obstacles that will get in the way of the path will provide conflict, drama, and hopefully, lots of entertainment.
The ‘want’ here is Doctor Morel. She has the weapon. So we need to go find her.
Lesson 2 is that a “want” should never be easy. If your characters can easily find whatever they’re looking for, there isn’t going to be drama in your story. So you need the unexpected to happen. You need things to go wrong. When Gerry gets to Geneva, Morel is already gone. And not just gone. Gone under mysterious circumstances.
This juices up the story because now we’re not just trying to find her. We’re curious why she chose to mysteriously disappear.
A script is basically a repeating series of this pattern. Your hero will eventually find Morel. From there, you create another “want.” Here, it’s a second scientist, which isn’t my favorite choice. I don’t like repeated plot beats. It’s usually better if the new want is different. But it’s better than nothing.
In The Matrix, the first “want” is to find out what the Matrix is. The second “want” is to go see the Oracle to see if he’s “the one.” The third “want” is that Morpheus has been kidnapped and they have to rescue him.
This script is actually chock full of screenwriting lessons. Another well utilized lesson in WWZ 2 is that you set up rules to break rules. No, I’m not talking about the rules of screenwriting. I’m talking about the rules of your fictional world.
One of the first things we learn (it’s on the very first page, actually) is that camouflage protects the humans from the zombies. The zombies will not pay attention to you if you’ve injected it.
If you go through your entire script and that rule is never challenged, you’re a bad writer. The whole point of creating rules like that is to break them later in a dramatically fun way. They do that when they first encounter the Large Hadron zombies in the underground lab. All the marines are injected, told not to worry, and they walk in there, not a worry in the world. And then… RAHAREHAHJAFHLDK!!!!!IAJLFKDAALAF. Zombie mayhem.
You created the rule to break the rule. Always a strong narrative move.
And the camouflage was the gift that kept on giving in this script. I loved that they had to depend on the camouflage in a city of 5 million zombies, when they’d just seen that it didn’t work and when they know the vaccine in their veins is almost at the end of its cycle. I can only imagine how great a scene it would be onscreen to have to walk through 50,000 zombies hoping that your vaccine still has enough gas in the tank.
Overall, I found this script to be fun. It is similar to the first film. They’re not breaking any new ground. But the new rules (camouflage, N29, air transmission) add just enough of a spark to keep the concept fresh.
Honestly, with a lot of the less-than-stellar content Paramount puts out, I’m shocked that they haven’t made this movie. It’s definitely one of the top properties over there. It’s time to get Fincher back on the phone. After shooting an artsy black and white movie, he’ll be thrilled to make something big and fun like this.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: A match hasn’t started until someone breaks serve. Tennis reference tip! In tennis, you are supposed to win (or “hold”) all your service games. This is because serving gives you an advantage. You are smashing the ball down on the other player, who must struggle to return the ball. This ensures that you almost always win your service games. Therefore, when someone “breaks” serve (the returner wins the game from the server), the match takes on a new energy. It means whoever broke serve has a clear path to win the set if they continue to hold their own serve the rest of the way. There’s a similar saying in screenplays: A script hasn’t begun until something goes wrong. Nowhere is this more evident than in World War Z 2. The script is heavy with exposition and setup all the way up to the Large Hadron Collider location. The script has just barely kept our interest so far. But when they break into the lab only to find that a bunch of zombies are waiting ANNNND these zombies aren’t phased by the “camouflage” vaccine, something has OFFICIALLY GONE WRONG and the script takes on a new energy. That’s the way you do it. Make sure to carefully craft your “break serve” moment as it tends to be the moment that the reader really latches in and commits to the experience.
What I learned 2: Send your characters to the place they DON’T want to go. Not to the place they do. In the Collider scene, they watch as a swarm of zombies block out all the exits. This forces the characters to go FURTHER INTO THE CIRCLE, the exact opposite thing they want to do. Which makes for a more exciting sequence.
