Even as those of us here in the US celebrate our independence day, our friends across the pond are hard at work still bringing the news. One awesome bit that’s surfaced today are the first set photos from the eagerly anticipated film World War Z.

The Daily Mail has a bunch of photos from the Malta set, dressed to look like an Israeli border checkpoint, featuring the film’s star Brad Pitt and the first glimpse of the evil zombie hordes that will menace him, and the world, during the film.

In the film, Pitt will play the author of the World War Z book Max Brooks, and tell the story of his exploits collecting the stories and experiences of those who have survived the human victory over the zombie hordes, also known as World War Z.

Even though we seem to be getting a lot more zombie stories these days, the fact that this book is finally getting the big screen treatment is welcome news. Love the book and can’t wait to see the film. For more, you can check out my interview with the real Max Brooks over at ComicMix.

Click through to check out all the pics. The Marc Forster-directed World War Z is expected sometime next year.

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World War Z, by Max Brooks, has been gestating in Hollywood pre-production limbo for years now. It is a tough nut to crack with most of it’s narrative being told in one-on-one interviews between Brooks and his fictional characters. Despite the academic structure, Brooks still managed to craft an apocalyptic world that is engrossing and terrifying in it’s realism.

According to Bleeding Cool, production on the feature film version is finally making serious forward momentum as Director of Photography has begun preparations for the shoot, and it is a good one:

Robert Richardson, who recently wrapped Martin Scorsese’s Hugo Cabret down at Shepperton. This time he will be working out of another one of our big production bases, over at Elstree. Amongst Richardson’s other credits are Kill Bill, Natural Born Killers and Eight Men Out.

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If you love zombies, are a fan of Max Brooks’ excellent novel World War Z and are excited a feature film version of the novel is being made, then this news might be a bit disappointing to you. According to Fangoria News, the adaptation of Brook’s novel about a war against a virtually unstoppable zombie horde is going to take a bit longer to hit the screen than originally thought.

In an interview with the Swiss site Migros-Magazin referenced in the article, World War Z director Marc Forster, of the recent Quantum of Solace, said that the screenplay by J. Michael Straczynski is in development but “still far from realization.” And instead of waiting around for it to be ready, Forster has moved on to another project, the thriller Disconnect. As for World War Z, hopefully we’ll get to see it eventually after the script is ready. It just doesn’t look like we’ll be seeing it any time soon.

When I interviewed Max Brooks last year, he was pretty sure the scrip was moving along nicely. Although, as he said in the interview, he didn’t really have that much to do with it except for the fact he was thrilled J. Michael Straczynski was the writer. Now that the script seems to be taking longer than expected and the film is delayed, I wonder how he feels about it now?

I know how I feel. This delay is unfortunate for sure but I choose to look on the potential bright side here. Mayabe Stracyznski is taking so long because he wants the script to be awesome? And maybe the departure of Forster isn’t such a bad thing? To be honest, I didn’t really like Quantum of Solace very much so if Forster never comes back, maybe we’ll get an even better dirctor? One can hope.