Cabin in the Woods director Drew Goddard rewriting ending for the troubled World War Z?

Director Marc Forster’s WORLD WAR Z is a project that’s been marred with tons upon tons of problems in recent months. Most recently, “Lost” and PROMETHEUS scribe Damon Lindelof was brought on to do some “script revisions”, i.e. overhaul the film’s entire third act. Aside from the 5-7 weeks of reshoots that will begin taking place later this fall, a third act rewrite is probably the second worst thing that can happen to your big-budget tentpole. Good job, people getting paid millions to do this shit!

But according to Deadline, the thing with Lindelof is that he’s too busy to write the ending! He has apparently passed off the duties to his writing buddy Drew Goddard, the guy who co-wrote with Lindelof on “Lost”, directed THE CABIN IN THE WOODS, and most recently adapted Steven Spielberg’s ROBOPOCALYPSE. Might his involvement be the film’s saving grace?

Maybe, maybe not. Deadline adds that Goddard may turn out to be too busy himself to actually finish the script, so Paramount’s got a back-up plan in… wait for it… Christopher McQuarrie (THE USUAL SUSPECTS). The studio is apparently in love with him after what he’s been doing on the Tom Cruise project JACK REACHER, though being that McQuarrie is Cruise’s go-to writer, it’s unclear if – after all this – he will be available since he’ll reportedly be doing script work for Cruise and director Doug Liman on the upcoming action film ALL YOU NEED IS KILL. So, basically, nobody knows anything for certain.

Somewhat bewilderingly though is that Marc Forster – after all his supposed shortcomings on the project – will be directing the film’s reshoots later this year. After presumably paying arms and legs for new writers (and that’s not to mention the cost of the upcoming reshoots), I guess it turned out cheaper for Paramount to just stick with the guy.