Zack Snyder has made it through production on ARMY OF THE DEAD, his long-awaited return to zombie horror and a project that was first announced not long after Snyder's DAWN OF THE DEAD remake was released. ARMY OF THE DEAD finally happened at Netflix, with a budget in the range of $90 million.
Although filming wrapped in October, we still have to wait until the end of the year for the movie to be released through the Netflix streaming service. And while we wait, one of the cast members has revealed some intriguing details about the film's action.
Actress/stuntwoman Samantha Win, who started training in jiujitsu when she was just 4 years old and went on to compete in wushu championships, plays a character named Chambers in ARMY OF THE DEAD. Win was recently interviewed by Whistlekick Martial Arts Radio, and during the conversation she was asked if she has a favorite martial arts movie. Win replied,
I really appreciate what THE RAID did for the industry part of it, because I’m personally a fan of that violent style of fighting on camera and it’s the most fun to be able to perform. I really like THE RAID for those reasons. I feel like it opened up this genre of real violent, long takes of fighting and, just as an actor, a performer, it’s so fun to be able to do that. I’m glad that it’s becoming a little bit more mainstream and you get to experience that, because there’s nothing like it on set when you get to do a whole sequence and you get to live it fully all the way through. Maybe 20 kills or something, as opposed to punch-punch-cut, punch-kick-punch-cut, slash-slash-cut. It’s like in wushu. I would do a minute and 30 second routines, so I like being able to do the whole thing and getting that adrenaline rush, and you really feel it in your bones. So I like that because of THE RAID."
She went on to say,
On my last project, I got to do a couple of really long takes of things like that, and there’s just nothing that compares to it. Especially because you need more people for longer takes too, and with more people who are just as involved as you are, there’s this energy that just can’t be replicated when you get to live through the whole thing like that."
Which, of course, brought up the question of what exactly that "last project" was. And it was the "zombie flick" ARMY OF THE DEAD.
I’m pretty excited about that, and I’m pretty excited there was a lot of weaponry in it, like gun handling that we got to do training for. Not a whole lot has been released about story or details yet, so can’t talk too much about it, but the kind of training that we got to do was something new for myself. We had a couple SEALs going over rifle and pistol work with us, and anything involving zombies is just going to be super fun. Probably one of my favorite experiences on that was, in one of the sequences, I don’t know how much I’m allowed to talk about yet, but it’s nice discovering some UFC fighters that were there and I had no idea they were there. But zombies is just such a genre that’s fun for people. Why wouldn’t you be there if you could be there? So, it was really neat to me. Yeah, a lot of fun. I hate how vague I have to be."
Knowing that the movie is going to have long takes of violent, RAID-like action featuring a whole lot of zombie deaths makes me wish we could see it much sooner than next winter.
Written by Snyder, Joby Harold, and Shay Hatten, ARMY OF THE DEAD is an adventure film that takes place after
a zombie outbreak in Las Vegas, where a man assembles a group of mercenaries to take the ultimate gamble: venturing into the quarantined zone to pull off the greatest heist ever attempted.
Win is joined in the cast by Dave Bautista, Ella Purnell, Ana De La Reguera, Huma Qureshi, Raúl Castillo, Omari Hardwick, Chris D’Elia, Hiroyuki Sanada, Nora Arnezeder, Matthias Schweighöfer, Rich Cetrone, and Garret Dillahunt.
Zack Snyder produced ARMY OF THE DEAD with Deborah Snyder and Wesley Coller.