Last week, a poster for Army of Thieves, a prequel to Zack Snyder's Army of the Dead, was released online and sported the tagline: "More safes. Less zombies." Now a trailer for Army of Thieves has arrived online, and it lets us know that the zombie outbreak has begun by the time this story gets started, but lead character Ludwig Dieter – played by Matthias Schweighöfer, who also directed the film – doesn't seem too concerned about them just yet.
Scripted by Shay Hatten from a story crafted by Snyder, Army of Thieves has the following synopsis:
A small-town bank teller, Dieter 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.
Schweighöfer is joined in the cast by Nathalie Emmanuel, Guz Khan, Stuart Martin, Ruby O. Fee, Jonathan Cohen, Noémie Nakai, Trent Garrett, John Bubniak, and Barbara Meier.
A release date for Army of Thieves has not yet been announced. All we know is that the movie is expected to reach the Netflix streaming service sometime this fall.
I haven't gotten around to watching Army of the Dead, so the Army of Thieves trailer really serves as my introduction to the Ludwig Dieter character. He seems like he could be a fun guy to watch, and this movie looks to me like it could be a good time.
The fact that Army of the Dead comes as a pre-packaged franchise makes me more interested in any of this than I probably would have been otherwise. In addition to Army of the Dead and Army of Thieves, Netflix has already announced a prequel anime series called Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas, and Snyder is developing an Army of the Dead 2.
Schweighöfer produced Army of Thieves with Zack Snyder, Deborah Snyder, Wesley Coller, and Dan Maag of Pantaleon Films.