Marc Forster Clarifies Decision to Change World War Z’s Ending

Steve Barton   |  

Nov 30, 2013

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When World War Z hit home video back in September, we were bummed to discover that the much-publicized alternate ending of the film, which was completely re-shot for the finished product, wasn’t included with the release or even mentioned in any of the special features.

As Uncle Creepy wrote in his review of the World War Z Blu-ray / DVD combo pack, it was as if the whole thing never even existed.

For those that have been waiting for some sort of explanation, director Marc Forster has just offered one up to the folks over at Empire. They caught up with him at Poland’s Camerimge Festival of Cinematography and pressed him for answers. “Basically, originally there was a third act that I thought didn’t work,” he explained. “As we were shooting, we were discussing it and rewriting and rewriting it.”

You can read a full rundown of the original ending right here, but the basic gist is that it was going to see Brad Pitt’s character, Gerry, engaging in an epic final battle with the zombies in Moscow, where he essentially turns into a zombie-killing machine. Ultimately, the issue was that Forster just didn’t think such an ending would fit the tone of the movie he ended up making.

“The reason I felt it wouldn’t work is that by that time you have a certain battle fatigue after Israel,” he elaborated. “After Israel and the plane crash, trying to trump that and make it even bigger wasn’t working in our favor. The problem with a lot of these big movies is you start production and the script isn’t finished; we had the same problem with Quantum [of Solace]. The third act wasn’t fully fleshed out, but we had to rush in to meet the release date.”

Forster says he’s much happier with the ending he ended up going with and that a whole lot of money was saved in bringing a much less action-packed finale to the screen. Proof that less is sometimes more!

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