The new millennium has been jam packed with great new space science fiction programming on television. Brilliant, serious science fiction shows like ‘Farscape’and ‘Battlestar Galactica’ have left their mark. But in the 90s it was slim pikings. ‘Star Trek’ was on life support and the science fiction landscape was basically dead. Except that is, for J. Michael Straczynski’s brilliant series ‘Babylon 5’.
Since the show ended its five season run, there have been several attempts by JMS to resurrect it. None of them have gone anywhere except to some new direct-to-DVD features coming out soon, and he’s moved on to other projects. Wherever JMS goes, it’s worth following. One of his newest gigs is working on an adaptation of the Max Brooks book “World War Z”.
Word comes from our friends over at Filmstalker who’ve picked up an interview with Straczynski on IGN. In it JMS drops the news that he’s working on adapting the novel for Paramount, and that it may be a starring vehicle for Brad Pitt.
So what’s it about? Here’s how Straczyski describes the book: “…the book, if you haven't read it, is a wonderful, wonderful book in an interview format after the zombie wars.” Alright I’ve got to confess something. As soon as I heard zombie my interest level dropped right off. I love Straczynski’s work, but the whole zombie market is absolutely glutted right now. The last thing we need is another zombie movie, I don’t care how good the source material is. But maybe there’s more to this. He describes it more as a political thriller than another dumb movie about flesh eaters.
JMS explains, “You see how we survived. It's very political, very smart, very cagey, but there's no main character. So you have to create who the interviewer is and give him some background and bring him from place to place to place to place. And they said, 'Feel free to get as political as you want, as incisive as you want, to play with it. You could look at this as a Katrina kind of catastrophe.' But I'm being very faithful to the book, letter by letter when I can, and I'm on about page 70 right now and I'm really happy with it. I'm really pleased with it actually, so if that goes well we might go into production on that one.”
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Babylon-5-Creator-Makes-Brad-Pitt-Zombie-Movie-4563.html
