A report on the making of World War Z has revealed that the budget for the film ballooned to a whopping $200 million while there were plenty of other odd issues to contend with, many of which were explained to the publication by screenwriter Damon Lindelof, who met the main star Brad Pitt at one point to discuss the troubled zombie movie project.

“He took me through how excited he was when he read the book, what was exciting for him, the geopolitical aspect of it,” Lindelof explained, adding that Pitt had told him “‘But when we started working on the script, a lot of that stuff had to fall away for the story to come together. We started shooting the thing before we locked down how it was going to end up, and it didn’t turn out the way we wanted it to.’” He was apparently asked to watch an edit and was told “The thing we really need right now is someone who is not burdened by all the history that this thing is inheriting, who can see what we’ve got and tell us how to get to where we need to get.”

The ending was apparently terrible, forcing Lindelof to give the cast and crew two options. “Is there material that can be written to make that stuff work better? To have it make sense? To have it have emotional stakes? And plot logic and all that? And Road Two, which I think is the long-shot road, is that everything changes after Brad leaves Israel” which meant 12 minutes of footage cut and a new ending. “I didn’t think anyone was going to say, ‘Let’s throw it out and try something else,’” he commented. “So when I gave them those two roads and they sounded more interested in Road B”—which meant shooting an additional 30 to 40 minutes of the movie—“I was like, ‘To be honest with you, good luck selling that to Paramount.’”

Brad Pitt
Brad Pitt met Lindelof with serious mis-givings about World War Z