After a torturously extended production for the first movie, Brad Pitt’s World War Z sequel worked overtime to insure that wouldn’t happen again, mainly by giving itself plenty of time to revise, reshoot, and generally do as many takes as necessary so that no one can accuse it of being a “troubled” shoot again. And so, in keeping with that more-is-more philosophy, /Film reports the production has hired Dennis Kelly, creator of British television series Utopia, to write a new version of the script.
Kelly comes after a first draft was written by Eastern Promises and Locke scribe Steven Knight, whose promise to start from a “clean slate” now looks like it might more accurately be applied to his draft of the speedy-zombies sequel. Of course, it also sounds like hiring Kelly might have more to do with keeping the director happy: supposedly, J.A. Bayona (The Impossible) wanted a more “fanboy-friendly writer” on the film, and had been weighing abandoning the project to do Universal’s Jurassic World 2. Perhaps now with his preferred writer, he can make a “fanboy-friendly” sequel, possibly taking a page from the Jurassic World strategy by having a growling Brad Pitt face a new, genetically modified, super-massive Brad Pitt that eventually gets eaten by an even bigger water-based Pitt.