Development On March 25, 2007,
Warner Bros. Pictures announced it would produce the
zombie film Army of the Dead, based on a story by
Zack Snyder and using a screenplay written by
Joby Harold. In a statement, Snyder said he wanted the film to feel similar to his previous projects
Dawn of the Dead (2004) and
300 (2007) and that it would center around a father in
Las Vegas "who tries to save his daughter from imminent death in a zombie-infested world". At the time, Wesley Coller was attached to executive produce, with Snyder and his wife
Deborah Snyder producing through Cruel & Unusual Films (now known as
The Stone Quarry). The film is not a
sequel to
Dawn of the Dead but rather a
spiritual successor. During
Dawn of the Deads production, Snyder got the idea and realized he needed a new
origin story to develop the plot and a new incarnation of the living dead. He titled the project
Army of the Dead as a tribute to the
Night of the Living Dead series from
George A. Romero. Snyder clarified his work on the project by saying it was "not
made by committee. It's definitely a movie that's incredibly personal and singular". In June 2008, Dutch commercial director and visual artist
Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. was signed on to the project to make his
feature directorial debut. By October 2011, however, the film was in
development hell; van Heijningen said the film had been shelved "three months before shooting" due to the
2008 financial crisis. In an interview, van Heijningen also said the film, if moved forward, would include scenes where "the male zombies rape human females. And they have human hybrid zombie offsprings". In February 2012, van Heijningen said Warner Bros. Pictures would cancel
Army of the Dead "because of the expense of shooting in Las Vegas". After a failed attempt from
Legendary Entertainment to produce it,
Netflix acquired the distribution rights to the project in January 2019, now described as a zombie
heist film, with Snyder attached to direct. In the initial report, given by
The Hollywood Reporter, it was announced Netflix had given the film a $90 million production budget, with filming scheduled to begin that same year; Snyder added, "I thought this was a good palate cleanser to really dig in with both hands and make something fun and epic and crazy and bonkers in the best possible way. I love to honor canon and the works of art, but this is the opportunity to find a purely joyful way to express myself through a genre". As Harold's script was written with a different director and budget in mind, Snyder opted to rewrite the script in collaboration with
Shay Hatten. According to Snyder, Warner Bros. Pictures had been strict on their plans for the feature film and experienced budget issues as a result. Netflix allowed the director to create most of his ideas for the project. Snyder recalled a meeting where he spoke about several screenplays he was working on, and after mentioning
Army of the Dead, Netflix head of original films
Scott Stuber told him to "Go write that movie and let's make it. Go write it tomorrow, and we'll shoot it in a week".
Casting chose
Army of the Dead over
The Suicide Squad to work with Snyder.
Dave Bautista was cast in April 2019, with the production budget now reported at $70 million. In joining the film, Bautista said his initial reaction to the offer was a clear "no," as the actor was searching for dramatic roles, but wanting to work with Snyder and having read the screenplay, he changed his mind and agreed to star. He also mentioned that he had to choose the project over
The Suicide Squad, and told
Digital Spy, "I had
The Suicide Squad where I got to work with my boy
[James Gunn] again, even though it's a smaller role, and then I had
Army of the Dead on which I get to work with Zack, I get to build a relationship with Netflix, I get a lead role in a great film – and I get paid a lot more money. I had to call James, and I told him, 'It breaks my heart because as a friend, I want to be there with you, but professionally, this is the smart decision for me". The following month,
Ella Purnell,
Ana de la Reguera,
Theo Rossi, and
Huma Qureshi were cast, and character descriptions were released. In July 2019,
Omari Hardwick,
Chris D'Elia,
Hiroyuki Sanada,
Garret Dillahunt,
Raúl Castillo,
Nora Arnezeder,
Matthias Schweighöfer,
Samantha Win, and Richard Cetrone were all announced as part of the cast. In an interview, Reguera was asked why she wanted to join the film and said it was because of its screenplay and that compared to other zombie features,
Army of the Dead was "always about love". With the same question, Hardwick responded by saying he admired Snyder's unique cinematic style. Arnezeder replied by saying she enjoyed the screenplay for being a "zombie movie with a lot of poetry and a lot of different genres. It was funny at times; it had some thriller aspects to it. It's incorporating a lot of different genres that are melting really well together. It's really well put together". Schweighöfer responded to the question by saying he wanted to work with Snyder and also enjoyed the idea of playing a German with actual character and a sense of humor. Before filming began, the cast was taken to "Zombie Boot Camp," where they trained their gun handling skills and practiced working as a group. Schweighöfer, who portrays a
safecracker inexperienced with killing zombies, actually knew how to use a firearm and had to be trained to "look less skilled." Furthermore, Snyder has a brief cameo in the film, where he can be seen for a second on the reflection of a mirror holding a camera. Pointing it out, he said, "We were going to take it out but I told them to leave it, it's good".
Filming was added into the film through CGI after replacing
Chris D'Elia. Principal photography for
Army of the Dead began on July 15, 2019, in
Albuquerque, New Mexico, and moved to
Albuquerque Studios in August. Filming in
Atlantic City, New Jersey, began in September, where the
Atlantic Club Casino Hotel and the
Showboat Atlantic City, both closed in 2014, were used for interior scenes and on-location filming. According to the New Jersey Motion Picture and Television Commission, $25 million from the film's budget were used for production in Atlantic City. Additional filming took place in Las Vegas, Nevada, and
Los Angeles, California. Snyder also served as the film's
cinematographer and as his first feature using
digital cameras, the company
Red Digital Cinema designed custom-made "Red Monstro" cameras that could use the 1960s
Canon 50mm 0.95
rangefinder lenses Snyder had bought on
eBay, giving the film what he described as "dreamlike, out-of-focus [imagery]" with "a soft, organic look". In a press release from Netflix, it was revealed the film's opening scene took five weeks to shoot, as Snyder wanted to capture it with natural light. Bautista also noted the filmmaker's direction and said that as the
cameraman, Snyder would spend a lot of time shooting scenes from different angles, capturing hours of footage that included simply facial expressions, and would sometimes "go off on his own and start filming whatever he wants". In August 2020, a year after filming had concluded, it was announced D'Elia would be cut from the film due to sexual misconduct allegations and that
Tig Notaro would replace him. As a result of the
COVID-19 pandemic, Notaro shot her scenes that September throughout 14 days with an acting partner using
green screens; Reguera was the only cast member to return for the reshoots and shot two scenes with Notaro in half a day. After the reshoots, Notaro was added into the final product through
CGI. On recasting the actor, Snyder said the decision was "fairly easy" but that it cost "a few million [dollars]". By March 2021, Snyder confirmed that work on the film had been completed.
Visual effects The film's
visual effects supervisor was Marcus Taormina. Wanting to capture aerial footage of the
Las Vegas Strip, Taormina and his VFX crew were told by various casino owners that they were not allowed to enter their casinos and also could not access their roofs. As a result, Taormina and about a dozen VFX
still photographers spent 12 days using scissor lifts, drones, and a Phase One camera attached to a helicopter to capture the footage and create a 3D model of the area, using
LiDAR scanning, that was implemented during filming and post-production. To create Valentine, the zombie-tiger seen in the film, the VFX crew met with big-cat rights activist
Carole Baskin (months before Netflix released
Tiger King) and visited
Big Cat Rescue in
Tampa, Florida, to model their designs around one of the
white tigers, named Sapphire, present in the sanctuary.
Music Dutch composer
Tom Holkenborg confirmed on a
Reddit AMA in May 2020 that he would be composing the film's
score. The soundtrack album was released by
Milan Records on May 21, 2021. It includes Holkenborg's score and the
Elvis Presley song "
Viva Las Vegas" (performed by
Richard Cheese and
Allison Crowe). In an interview, Holkenborg recalled that Snyder told him to make the music "modern, make it unworldly, make it as emotional as you can with soft, dark, underlining haunting elements". To accomplish this, he created a "totally electronic score [...] packed with adrenaline-pumping music" that Snyder later said he enjoyed. ==Marketing==