IT’S THE BOOZE TALKIN: Don’t Make World War Z PG-13!!

Last Updated on July 23, 2021

Author Max Brooks dropped a serious bomb on the whole zombie-rebirth a few years ago with his entertaining, funny, gritty, and all-around awesome novel WORLD WAR Z (WWZ). By using different voices from all around the world to tell their tale of what it was like going to war with an army of the undead essentially took what we’ve seen of zombie apocalypses and flopped it on its head. If you haven’t read that shite yet, stop what you’re doing and check it out right now. Since it’s a book about zombies it was no surprise that a big screen adaption would be in the works, the only real surprise is that it hasn’t happened yet. But it will—and soon—if Paramount and producer / possible star Brad Pitt have anything to do with it. The only problem is, attached to its $125M budgeted price tag is… the request to make the flick PG-13. Say whaaaaaaaaaat???

That’s right, according to some news dropped last week (read all about it HERE), additional funding and producer involvement hinges on one stipulation: that the movie will be PG-13. And anybody that knows anything about zombie movies knows, you can’t make a f*cking PG-13 zombie movie! How this even sounds like a good idea is beyond me, but I’m not the one getting this f*cker made, so what do I know, right? Oh wait, that’s right, I know that nothing says Bad Idea more than trying to make a big-budgeted zombie apocalypse movie with a $125M price tag PG-13!!!

I know exactly what the arguments will be for this going forward so let’s just address them now and get it out of the way. Argument #1: with a PG-13 rating, more people will be able to see it, thus it should be able to make back it’s $125M and then some, making the movie profitable and therefore a success because, after all, showbusiness is business. There’s some validation to this, but just because shit’s PG-13 doesn’t mean it’ll make money—and when was the last time a zombie / horror / war-time movie released PG-13 that was so gosh-darn profitable? BATTLE: LA would be a good example of a gritty marines-at-war narrative—but it will break the $100M barrio at the box office? Maybe… Or maybe not. PG-13 doesn’t guarantee box office success, just ask JONAH HEX. There has to be other things at work, like a good story, script, direction, etc…. If it’s a good movie, people will see it (just look at INGLORIOUS BASTERDS, a flick that ended up making $313M at the box office world wide).

Argument #2: THE WALKING DEAD. The series that blew us all away last fall is a zombie apocalypse, it features plenty of zombie carnage, it’s one of the better zombie tales ever, and it was done for less than PG-13—it was done for TV. If they can do that on TV imagine the envelope they could be pushing for the big screen, where they’re allowed to swear more and (potentially) be a bit more revealing with the gore. It’s a good argument, for sure, but think about this: would THE WALKING DEAD work as a 2 hour movie on the big screen the way it is right now? Because it’s TV it can spend a lot of time not featuring zombie carnage as long as it features a little bit each episode. But if it were a movie, you’d be bored to tears for over an hour just to see a speck of zombie nastiness. And for a zombie apocalypse movie that is based on the entire planet going to war with the undead, that would be the biggest F-U in cinematic history. This shit’s gotta be big—and while THE WALKING DEAD is solid, WWZ has to be bigger, better, and feature a shit-ton more zombie action than the show.

Beyond those two arguments, I can’t see any reason why anyone would want to make WWZ PG-13. But I haven’t even layed into the most obvious reasons for this idiotcracy: PG-13 can’t contain the zombie gore tha ‘s necessary in the telling of a true and blue zombie apocalypse story. I’m talking mass casualities, tons of blood, buckets of guts, the death and destruction of the innocent and zombies alike, body parts splattering every which way, and yes, throwing in some truly frightening sequence of possible zombie takeover would be epic too. And none of that shit could happen PG-13.

Maybe it’s the booze talkin’, but there’s no way in hell a big budgeted, big screen adaptation of Max Brooks’ WORLD WAR Z should be PG-13. There’s ‘hard R’ written all over the zombie epic and the fact that PG-13 is seriously being considered is a travesty in itself. Zombie movies, by definition, need to be rated R and one set in a war zone should be a no-brainer. So please, please, please, as a fan of zombie flicks, Brooks’ novel, and all that is holy, don’t make WORLD WAR Z at all unless it’s gonna get that gore-induced R it so rightfully deserves.