Very few feel the ire of fanboys quite like Damon Lindelof. Stemming from his days writing on LOST to last year's PROMETHEUS, Lindelof's name immediately pisses off a large portion of movie fans on the Internet. When it was reported that he was being brought in to help fix the ending of WORLD WAR Z, the floodgates opened and a million rage faces cried out in unison. Personally, I like Lindelof and think he works very well within the J.J. Abrams universe. But, I may be in the minority.
Lindelof is active online and has a popular Twitter feed, so he is definitely aware of his status amongst fans. With that in mind, it is interesting to learn that Lindelof himself didn't want anyone to know he was working on WORLD WAR Z as a way to protect the already troubled movie from the same backlash he has become accustomed to. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Lindelof frankly explained his stance.
“The idea of a large-scale, epic, $150 million zombie movie starring Brad Pitt sounds pretty good to me. Because I haven’t seen that before. I haven’t seen the go-for-broke, insane zombie movie. What I really liked/love about World War Z was it just completely and totally leaned into the spectacle of large-scale zombie outbreak. Which I had just never seen before on film. One of the things that Brad said was, there are so many tropes we’ve come to expect in zombie films, and he wanted to do something different. And the only way to do it different was to do it big.
One of the things that I said when I first agreed to do it was, ‘Guys, we have to do this completely and totally under the table.’ I’ve done gigs like this before, and nobody has ever known that I’ve worked on those movies. I just got through the Prometheus experience, and if the story is, ‘Lindelof comes in to fix World War Z ending,’ it’ll bring, literally, the worst press you can ever imagine. And then, before I even commenced work, it broke that I’d been engaged. I guarantee that I will take all the blame if the movie doesn’t do well. That’s what I’m here for.”
I sense some sarcasm in those final sentences, but you if every writer in Hollywood took the vitriol some people on the Internet can spew, the suicide rate would go through the roof. If WORLD WAR Z bombs, it will not be because of Lindelof but rather all of the issues that have come to light such as budget, egos, and a lack of a complete screenplay.
WORLD WAR Z will finally unleash it's PG-13 essence on screens everywhere on June 21, 2013.
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