Zack Snyder might be best known for imploding the DC Extended Universe, but he burst onto the scene with the surprisingly good remake of Dawn of the Dead. Now he’s returning to those roots with Netflix’s upcoming Army of the Dead, a genre-bending action film that combines a post-apocalyptic zombie movie with a heist film. Netflix has released a new batch of images to Entertainment Weekly that show off the movie’s ensemble cast of rugged-looking individuals that may also have a heart.
“It is a full-blown, balls-to-the-wall zombie heist movie, so it’s genre-on-genre in a great way,” said Snyder to EW. “So you expect pure zombie mayhem, and you get that, 100 percent. But also you get these really amazing characters on a fantastic journey. It’s going to surprise people that there’s a lot of warmth and real emotion with these great characters.”
More likely it’ll be a bunch of action heroes shooting things and saying some stuff in-between shooting those things, but with a cast that includes Dave Bautista, Ella Purnell, Omari Hardwick, Tig Notaro, and Huma Qureshi, there’s definitely room for some decent acting.
Army of the Dead‘s premise is that some weird disease has escaped from Area 51 in Nevada, and basically Las Vegas has been taken over by zombies. The U.S. government has locked down the entire city, but there’s all that money just sitting in there from the casinos. So a crack team of ne’er-do-wells makes a plan to infiltrate Las Vegas and come out rich and not zombies. Most likely not everything will go right.
Army of the Dead stood stagnant for years at Warner Bros. before Snyder met with Netflix and got the green light. The streamer has jumped on board in a big way, possibly seeing yet another franchise in the making. We’re not only getting the film, but a four-part animated prequel series with Christian Slater as the villain and the entire film’s cast taking part. The cartoon will look at the origin of the virus.
