[MAJOR SPOILERS FOR ARMY OF THE DEAD AHEAD]
Netflix and Zack Snyder are going full-franchise with Army of The Dead as the first film was released last week and seems like it’ll be a big hit for the streaming service which releases mostly iffy-to-average original films. The film takes place mostly after a zombie outbreak in Las Vegas has been contained and a group is to put together to heist $200 million from a casino vault before the U.S. government drops a nuke on the city.
In my opinion, Army of The Dead is one of the more cinematic films made specifically for Netflix and the company knows what they have in their hands as they’ve shot a prequel film Army of Thieves and are working on an anime series called Army of The Dead: Lost Vegas with a handful of returning characters.
The main film ended on a bit of a cliffhanger as Omari Hardwick’s Vanderohe’s escapes the nuclear blast to charter a private plane to Mexico City only to realize he’s turning into a zombie. If he is an Alpha Zombie, it could easily lead directly into a solid sequel set in Mexico taking the genre outside of the United States, which doesn’t regularly happen with western takes on the genre. Producer Deborah Snyder teased a potential sequel while speaking with Indie Wire, as Snyder suggests that Zack Snyder and screenwriter Shay Hatten already have ideas for another film and are “ready to go” if Netflix wants to make it.
DEBORAH SNYDER: “You always want the version that you’re doing to be as good as it can be, but I think there’s still more story to tell, and I know that Zack and Shay have a lot of ideas that are kind of fleshed out. If there was an appetite for another film, I think we’re ready to go.”
The producer also gave some insight into the prequel film Army of Thieves mentioning the project focused on Matthias Schweighofer’s Ludwig Dieter is similar to The Italian Job, adding it’s a romantic comedy heist film.
SNYDER: “It stands alone, and [while] you could watch it because it’s the history of our safecracker, it’s also just this really sweet, funny film,” she said. “It’s set in our same timeline, but it’s not like a zombie movie. … It’s more like ‘The Italian Job,’ but it takes place in a world where these zombies exist in America and it’s causing instability in the banking institutions. They’re moving money around, so it’s the perfect opportunity for a heist.”
Will the anime Army of The Dead: Lost Vegas, led by Joe Manganiello as Rose, explore the origins of the zombie pathogen and that tease to Area 51? Well, Deborah seems to be giving the impression it just might.
SNYDER: “We hint in the movie that we’re coming from Area 51, so maybe there’s a sci-fi element to it. I’m not going to say for sure, but it’s really fun to be able to do that and also to see our team when they were at the top of their game, doing the search and rescue. It’s just another bit of information.”
“Our movie takes place after the pandemic, they’ve contained the zombies to Vegas, but we don’t really talk about where it comes from. Where did this pathogen come from? How did this all happen? And we see our team and that they had been on these rescue missions. We see some flashbacks, what they were doing, but we don’t really know more, so the anime series is a great way to find out the origin of this.”
I’m kind of curious if they’ll attempt to connect the zombies to aliens or Mars, which might lead to some interesting sci-fi spinoffs potentially off-world alongside expanding upon this universe as having more threats other than zombies being hidden away at Area 51 and Zeus is simply just one that got out.
It sounds like we’ll have plenty of Army of The Dead content for years to come.
SOURCE: INDIE WIRE
THE RONIN 