Development was hired to direct the film in 2008. After a bidding war with
Appian Way Productions,
Brad Pitt's
Plan B Entertainment secured the screen rights to
Max Brooks' novel in 2007. The first draft of the screenplay was written by
J. Michael Straczynski, who identified the challenge in adapting the work as "creating a main character out of a book that reads as a UN report on the zombie wars."
Marc Forster signed on to direct, and described the film as reminiscent of 1970s conspiracy thrillers like ''
All the President's Men (1974). Straczynski identified the 2002 spy film The Bourne Identity'' as an appropriate comparison, and noted that the film would have a large international scope that maintained the political emphasis. When asked about his involvement with the film, Brooks stated he had "zero control", but favored a role for Pitt, and expressed approval for Straczynski as screenwriter. Brooks said: "I can't give it away, but Straczynski found a way to tie it all together. The last draft I read was amazing." An early script was leaked onto the internet in March 2008, leading to a review by ''
Ain't It Cool News'' that called it "[not] just a good adaptation of a difficult book [but] a genre-defining piece of work that could well see us all arguing about whether or not a zombie movie qualifies as '
Best Picture' material". The script was well-enough respected to find a place on the 2007
Black List of "most liked" screenplays not yet produced. The ''Ain't It Cool News
review also noted the film appears stylistically similar to Children of Men'' (2006), following Gerry Lane as he travels the post-war world and interviews survivors of the zombie war who are "starting to wonder if survival is a victory of any kind." Later in March, rumors surfaced that production offices were set up and the film was in early pre-production. Then, in June, Forster told an interviewer that the film would be delayed, stating that its script still needed a lot of development and was "still far from realization". Brooks revealed that the script was being re-written by
Matthew Michael Carnahan in July 2009. He said he believed this "show[ed] [the producer's] confidence in this project" because of the amount of money that was being invested in it.
Paramount Pictures and
UTV Motion Pictures announced at the 2010
San Diego Comic-Con that Forster was set as director, and Pitt was confirmed to be playing the lead role. In March 2011, it was reported on
Vulture that Paramount was searching for a co-financier, and would likely pull the plug on the adaptation without one. The article also stated that "an eleventh-hour effort is being made to court frequent Paramount co-financier
David Ellison." A week later, it was reported that "hot and heavy talks are going on with David Ellison's
Skydance Productions and as many as two other financiers."
Pre-production Pre-production began in April 2011, with
Robert Richardson being announced as the
cinematographer and
Nigel Phelps as
production designer. In the same month, it was reported that filming locations would include
Pinewood Studios and
London,
England. Also in April,
Mireille Enos was cast as Gerry Lane's wife and mother of their two children. In June,
James Badge Dale entered negotiations to join the film as an American soldier who tries to alert the authorities to the zombie threat.
Matthew Fox and
Ed Harris entered talks, and Julia Levy-Boeken was set to join the film. It was reported that filming would begin in
Malta the next month and would encompass
Valletta and the
Three Cities. A few days later, it was reported that filming would also take place in
Glasgow,
Scotland, in August, the city doubling for
Philadelphia, "with false shop fronts being constructed and American cars on the roads." Glasgow was reportedly chosen after "many months looking for the perfect city centre location to play an important part in the film." Filming was originally planned to take place in
Royal Tunbridge Wells, England before moving to Glasgow. Later in June, visual effects house
Cinesite announced that it would work on "a significant amount of shots". At the end of the month, it was reported that, despite previous reports, neither Fox nor Harris would be starring in the film; Fox had a scheduling conflict stemming from his prior commitment to star in
Alex Cross with
Tyler Perry at
Summit Entertainment, though he was later spotted filming scenes for
World War Z in
Falmouth, Cornwall.
Filming ,
Glasgow, August 2011 With a reported budget of over $125 million, Filming was scheduled to move to Glasgow in August, with the production company looking to recruit 2,000 local extras for the shoot. At least 3,000 people showed up at a casting call in Glasgow on July 9, hoping for the opportunity to appear in a scene set in a financial district in Philadelphia. Scenes were also shot in
Falmouth, Cornwall. Also in July, actor
Elyes Gabel was cast as a character named Fassbach. Despite opposition from residents, some scenes were shot on the
Heygate Estate in South London. The aircraft involved in the plane crash, depicted as Belarus Airways Flight 160, was an
Airbus A310-304, it operated by
Hi Fly and was registered as CS-TEX, and painted into a white livery. The scenes involving the plane taking off from Israel were shot at
Malta International Airport in
Luqa, Malta, which would stand in for
Jerusalem International Airport. In August,
Bryan Cranston entered negotiations to join the film in a "small but flashy" role, but he ultimately had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts. Also in August, filming was set to take place along a road on the perimeter of the
Grangemouth Refinery in
Grangemouth, Scotland, the location chosen for the length of the road, which was crucial to the shot. A few days later, Paramount announced the film would be released on December 21, 2012. Later in the same month, filming began in Glasgow. The location manager for the film said Glasgow had been chosen because of its architecture, wide roads, and grid layout. Scenes were also filmed aboard the
Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship
RFA Argus, before the Glasgow shoot. The ship was turned into the "USS
Madison", which involved stenciling a new pennant number on the funnel and adding some "Americanism" to the superstructure. Steven McMenemy, the
Arguss navigator, said: "The ship sailed and we were joined by four small catamarans which were being used as markers for the cameras, so that warships could be added in with CGI later." In October,
David Morse was cast as a "prisoner living in an abandoned jail." The filmmakers initially intended to film a climactic battle scene set in
Russia, and the crew moved to
Budapest to film it there. Filming in Budapest commenced on the evening of October 10. That morning, the Hungarian
Counter Terrorism Centre raided the warehouse where guns had been delivered for use as filming props. On February 10, 2012, the charges were dropped after investigators were unable to identify exactly which "organization or person" had "ownership rights"; therefore they could not "establish which party was criminally liable". Principal photography wrapped on November 4, 2011.
Post-production In June 2012, screenwriter
Damon Lindelof was hired to rewrite the film's third act, with reshoots scheduled to begin that September or October. He was brought in as a new set of eyes not burdened by all the history of the script and said: "[Brad Pitt] took me through how excited he was when he read the book, what was exciting for him, the geopolitical aspect of it. But when we started working on the script, a lot of that stuff had to fall away for the story to come together." Lindelof explained that there were inefficiencies in the script in relation to the shooting that started before the script was finalized, making the ending "abrupt and incoherent", and that the film was missing a large chunk of footage. He presented two options to executives, who ultimately chose to shoot 30 to 40 minutes of additional footage to change the ending. However, Lindelof did not have time to script the new ending, so in July Paramount hired his
Lost partner
Drew Goddard to finish the work. Goddard later told
Creative Screenwriting: "To me the big lesson of
World War Z was that Paramount, Plan B and Brad Pitt simply said, 'Let's take the time to make this movie the best version of the movie before we put it on the screen for audience.' That doesn't happen a lot. A lot of times they just throw the movie out there and say, 'We'll make all our money opening weekend and then the movie will go away.' I came away from it thinking, 'Why don't we do this on more movies?'" When all scenes of the Airbus A310-304 were shot at Malta, the shots of the plane taking off were digitally altered to have the aircraft be painted with the "Belarus Airways" livery, and the plane crash scene was done through CGI. The re-shoots, coupled with other overages, caused the film's budget to balloon to around $190 million, which shocked Paramount president Marc Evans. Several of the scenes shot in Budapest, including a large-scale battle with the zombies in Moscow's
Red Square, were dropped from the final cut in order to water down the film's political undertones and steer it towards a more generally friendly summer blockbuster. The climactic battle scene in Russia, for which there was 12 minutes of footage, reportedly had Pitt's character fighting through zombies more like "a warrior hero" than "the sympathetic family man" of the earlier acts. The second-unit director, Simon Crane, said: "It wasn't character-driven anymore... [The filmmakers] really needed to think about what they wanted to do with the third act." In March 2013, it was reported that Paramount changed a scene in the film, in which the characters speculate that the zombie outbreak originated in mainland China, in hopes of landing a distribution deal in the country. An executive familiar with upcoming releases in China told
TheWrap in June that a cut of the film was
rejected by Chinese censors. A Paramount executive contended that he was "unaware of any rejection", explaining: "We have submitted one version and have yet to receive a response." ==Music==