When Netflix announced they were doing an Army of Thieves panel at Comic-Con this year, I figured they would at the very least show a tiny bit of footage from the film and, sure enough, director-star Matthias Schweighöfer didn't show up empty-handed. Indeed, he closed out the panel premiering the film's first teaser trailer, and it's a good one, giving us a better idea of what kind of movie this prequel will be. As previously revealed, the film focuses on Schweighöfer's Ludwig Dieter in the early days of the zombie apocalypse, as Nathalie Emmanuel's Gwendoline recruits him to crack a series of legendary safes across Europe, indeed the very same kind of safe he's hired to crack in Vegas.
It has a different flavor than Army of the Dead, with it looking like most of the film takes place in Europe, with Schweighöfer revealing it was shot in the Czech Republic during the pandemic (with not a single infection on the shoot). The trailer looks pretty cool, with lots of action scenes, chases, some gun-play, hand-to-hand combat, and more. One thing there's not, though, are zombies, except for a quick mention by Emmanuel's Gwendoline, who asks Dieter if he's aware of what's going on in America, and some news footage Dieter sees on TV.
During the panel, Emmanuel made an appearance opposite producers Zack & Deborah Snyder. One can't help but feel like the movie has a little bit in common with her Fast & Furious movies in that it's an action-paced romp centering around an impossible heist. However, it also seems a bit lower key, perhaps with a more Ocean's 11 or The Italian Job vibe, with an absence of CGI from what I can see. Nevertheless, it looks like an entertaining movie, although Netflix has yet to set a definitive release date, saying it comes out in the fall.
Here's the official description via Netflix:
In this prequel to Zack Snyder's Army of the Dead, small-town bank teller Dieter (Matthias Schweighöfer) gets drawn into the adventure of a lifetime when a mysterious woman recruits him to join a crew of Interpol’s most wanted criminals, attempting to heist a sequence of legendary, impossible-to-crack safes across Europe.
Check out the whole Comic-Con @ Home panel below!