World War Z, the trilogy?

Fans of Max Brooks’s incredible novel “World War Z” were sad to hear how much the upcoming film adaptation is changing things, turning it into much more of CONTAGION-styled thriller. But maybe two more films could help things?

Dropped into a L.A. Times article about Brad Pitt’s career is the tidbit that WORLD WAR Z is being looked at as a potential trilogy by Paramount Pictures.

For Pitt, the big sci-fi thriller also represents his strongest bid to have a big film franchise of his own, which might be viewed as the missing piece of his career jigsaw puzzle. Forster and Paramount Pictures each view WORLD WAR Z as a trilogy that would have the grounded, gun-metal realism of, say, Damon’s Jason Bourne series tethered to the unsettling end-times vibe of AMC’s “The Walking Dead.”

This will all depend on the performance of the film, of course. In it, Pitt plays a United Nations fact-finder and family man that races around the world trying to find the origin of the zombie pandemic (Spoiler- it’s in China.) Not sure how sequels could possibly work for the material unless of course the world gets overrun? The book, after all, was set well after the events of the zombie apocalypse, and was more of a historical reference than anything. Will they have to change it completely in order to leave it open for sequels?

WORLD WAR Z is set for release next December.