{"id":2351,"date":"2021-05-26T22:21:16","date_gmt":"2021-05-27T02:21:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=2351"},"modified":"2021-05-26T22:21:16","modified_gmt":"2021-05-27T02:21:16","slug":"zack-and-deborah-snyder-on-the-making-of-his-zombie-mash-up-army-of-the-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=2351","title":{"rendered":"Zack And Deborah Snyder On The Making of His Zombie Mash-Up Army of the Dead"},"content":{"rendered":"

A veteran Director Zack Snyder and his producer wife Deborah have had their ups and downs working with a big studio such as Warner Brothers. He had made a string of DC Superhero films. WB also held the reins to his crazy-ass Zombie Apocalypse epic, \u201cArmy of The Dead<\/strong>,\u201d but the studio heads weren\u2019t giving the film their support. Then, thanks to the pandemic-prompted production freeze, Snyder met with Netflix which came to the rescue and greenlit this film.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Given that Snyder had made his feature film debut re-imagining George Romero\u2019s \u201cDawn of The Dead<\/strong>,\u201d he knew how to make a pretty impressive zombie film. In Snyder\u2019s unmistakable fashion, he came up with a new zombie film that re-fashioned the mythology while really camping it up. Set in Las Vegas, of all places, a mega zombie king is accidentally unleashed by the military and it wreaks havoc in America\u2019s playland creating multiple zombies, a zombie queen and zombie tiger.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Survivors who escape the zombie hordes that take over Las Vegas get placed in refugee camps which are getting bussed away from the devastation before Vegas will get nuked. Into this chaos comes Casino owner Bly Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanada) and his associate Martin (Garret Dillahunt) who enlist former mercenary Scott Ward (Dave Bautista) and his crew to recover $200 million from his casino\u2019s vault before the city is destroyed. They secretly enter the barricaded city and then all hell breaks loose.<\/p>\n

Again, thanks to Netflix, the film was also shown on the big screen in the studio\u2019s New York Paris Theater where Snyder and his wife conducted a post-screening Q&A.<\/p>\n

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ARMY OF THE DEAD (L to R) DAVE BAUTISTA as SCOTT WARD, ELLA PURNELL as KATE WARD in ARMY OF THE DEAD. Cr. CLAY ENOS\/NETFLIX \u00a9 2021<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Q: You have so many great characters in the film. Was there any moment on set during shooting, where you said, \u201cMaybe we should let this [character] live.\u201d<\/p>\n

ZS: Because it\u2019s a genre deconstruction, there\u2019s really no chance anyone’s going to live. In a genre deconstruction, the only cool ending is when everybody dies. Maybe, I guess, except Kate. Kate does live. Apparently, the helicopter that\u2019s landing has got a Red Cross on it, but I don’t know, what if there’s a CIA hitman on that helicopter who\u2019s come to snuff her out because now she knows the secrets. Or maybe they\u2019ve come to take her to Guantanamo. I don’t know, there’s a possibility\u2026<\/p>\n

Q: You shot this movie before the pandemic. Yet, t became so much more timely, you had so many political jokes, stuff about immigration and such\u2026 Are you surprised at how much it was relevant? It\u2019s just like you made it yesterday.<\/p>\n

SZ: At the time we didn\u2019t plan the pandemic [laughs].<\/p>\n

DS: Nobody knew what to do with the temperature guns [we had to use]. Where do you point them? It’s was like, every day we’re getting our temperature done.<\/p>\n

ZS: Right. When Theo [Rossi who plays a vile camp security guard Burt Cummings] and I were shooting the scene [where he uses one], he was like, \u201cI\u2019ve never put a temperature gun on a head.\u201d I got a temperature gun pointed at me every day since then. Before that it was like this weird thing that no one ever did it. Like I say, we weren\u2019t you’re planning on that stuff, if we had that wouldn\u2019t be cool\u2026<\/p>\n

Q: You have such great songs [in the film]. Did you have a list of song choices beforehand? Or, did they come to you when you’re making the movie?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

ZS: When I draw storyboards, I like to procrastinate. So I make a playlist because it also gives me something else to do. I must be a procrastinator. Everyone procrastinates a little bit \u2014 so if I have to draw storyboards which is arduous and time-consuming and a task that must get done, I therefore procrastinate. And you know what, to make these storyboards better, I come up with a song list that will inspire me to draw them. Then I spend a day listening to music. And it\u2019s one day more I\u2019m behind schedule [laughs].\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Eventually I get maybe 40 songs together. And Deb would be like, \u201cAre you drawing?\u201d And I say, \u201cI\u2019m listening to music so I can draw.\u201d That allows me to draw the things I need to do.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

DS: A lot of the songs made it [into the film]. Then we give them to the department heads. So our digital effects team, they all have this playlist which we’ve done it for past productions as well.<\/p>\n

ZS: I made a CD and gave everyone one. I was trying to make a tape. That would have been cooler. But the CD, they were like, \u201cOh cool a CD.\u201d And the CD is a collector\u2019s item. That\u2019s the scenario to get to [finding] the songs [for the film.]<\/p>\n

DS: What does this really cost? Like way over budget. Then there’s a negotiation. Sometimes we try other things and we say, \u201cWe\u2019ve got to fit that in. And then we have to ask the studio for more money [to get the rights.]<\/p>\n

ZS: The only song we didn\u2019t get in the movie was \u201cLeaving Las Vegas\u201d by Sheryl Crow. She didn’t even want to look at footage, she just said no.<\/p>\n

I was originally up for the music video of \u201cLeaving Las Vegas.\u201d I had written a treatment. Maybe it still hurts cause I didn’t get the video. But anyway, the music video I wanted to make was about Las Vegas as a metaphor for a physical reality that we all experience and that leaving Las Vegas was there for death or a transplanted spirit world.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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ARMY OF THE DEAD (L to R) NORA ARNEZEDER as LILLY (THE COYOTE),GARRET DILLAHUNT as MARTIN in ARMY OF THE DEAD. Cr. CLAY ENOS\/NETFLIX \u00a9 2021<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Q: This is your first Netflix film; how was it working with them?<\/p>\n

DS: They have been such amazing partners, they gave us such freedom. It was a real partnership with them. And freedom also meant listening to what they had to say. It was a real partnership that we had with them. And if it wasn’t for them, the movie wouldn’t have been made.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It was at Warner Brothers for years and we couldn’t figure it out. Then, when Zack wanted to do it, they didn’t give us the money we needed to actually make the movie.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So we had a general meeting with Scott Stuber at Netflix, talking about a lot of ideas and we told him about the movie and he was like, \u201cYou want to do that?<\/p>\n

ZS: A Zombie heist movie? No we weren\u2019t joking about that \u2014 a Zombie movie in Vegas. But it\u2019s also heist movie, after the zombie apocalypse. And no one [at Netflix] said no.<\/p>\n

DS: Welcome to Netflix. What was also amazing is that when we came to them and said, \u201cThis movie starts like after the zombie apocalypse, and no one knows what happened. So we want to do an animated prequel.<\/p>\n

And they were like, \u201cYeah, that was great.\u201d And then we said, \u201cYou know what? [The German safecracker] Deiter is such a great character. What if we do a movie about his backstory?\u201d<\/p>\n

And they again said, \u201cYes.\u201d What\u2019s really unique here is that a lot of studios talk about creating franchises and these worlds, but they want to wait for it to be a sure bet.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But with Netflix, they had enough faith to say, let’s do all these other things, which stand on their own.\u201d Audiences don’t have to see them all, you can watch them independently, but they also are interconnected.\u201d And they did them in a timely fashion \u2014 they\u2019ll all come out within the next year. So that\u2019s amazing.<\/p>\n

ZS: I know it’s weird.<\/p>\n

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ARMY OF THE DEAD (L to R) DAVE BAUTISTA as SCOTT WARD, OMARI HARDWICK as VANDEROHE, TIG NOTARO as PETERS, SAMANTHA WIN as CHAMBERS, COLIN JONES as DAMON, MATTHIAS SCHWEIGH\u0085FER as DIETER, RA\u00f4L CASTILLO as MICKEY GUZMAN, ANA DE LA REGUERA as CRUZ in ARMY OF THE DEAD. Cr. CLAY ENOS\/NETFLIX \u00a9 2021<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Q: Talking about weird\u2026 Since the zombie queen\u2019s head [was severed from] her body, would she have lived had the head been re-attached?<\/p>\n

ZS: We were always talking about what if you attached the zombie queen’s head to the the tiger\u2019s [body]. That\u2019s my way of thinking, but that\u2019s cool too. What happened if there was a chance? Like in \u201cInvasion of the Body Snatchers\u201d where say the tiger goes to sleep and then you lay the zombie queen head next to it and somehow tentacles come out and grab onto it. And then by the morning, it’s a zombie, it’s a tiger but with a zombie queen head.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Q: How was it filming the disembodied head? Her head was still alive even though there was no body. She looked around\u2026<\/p>\n

ZS: You reminded me of [that old B&W movie with a disembodied head]. It fucked me up; I was [haunted] by it when I was six years old and it never got okay.<\/p>\n

DS: It was complicated filming, and for some of the scenes, we actually had [the actor Athena] wears a green outfit and we just had her head. So she did the head thing when she was headless.<\/p>\n

ZS: The dolly\u2019s here\u2026 We used a Fisher Dolly which has a boom, and a camera goes on that. Turn this knob and then you can roll it out in any direction. You put the dance floor down \u2014 that\u2019s sheets of plywood. It allows it to roll in any direction.<\/p>\n

It’s not on a track. It’s just free-rolling. And then [the Zombie Queen] would sit where the camera goes. She had on a green suit and there was a line where her head was cut off at the neck, where it would be.\u00a0 Below that it would be green.<\/p>\n

The coyote, Nora, [Arnezeder who plays Lily who guided them into Las Vegas] would hold up her head and hair. Then Darren, our Dolly grip, would Dolly her around. And when she lifted it up, we\u2019d boom her up, boom her down.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It was so funny.\u00a0 Also we had the animatronic head. for the wide shots where like the guy used radio control, would like watching it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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ARMY OF THE DEAD (Pictured) RICH CETRONE as \u201cZEUS\u201d in ARMY OF THE DEAD. Cr. NETFLIX \u00a9 2021<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Q: Where’s the head is now?<\/p>\n

ZD: {To Deb] where’s that head?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

DS: I think in storage, in a warehouse.<\/p>\n

Q: There were other problems you had with this film. Like replacing Chris D\u2019Elia (who had come under fire for inappropriate behavior) with comic Tig Notaro \u2014 who had never done an action role before.<\/p>\n

ZS: We kind of knew what we were getting into, but had no idea how hard it would be. It was suggested we use Tig. My brain just went, \u201cWait. Tig. Yes. That\u2019s it.\u201d [Then] I\u2019m like, \u201cDo you think she would do this, though?\u201d<\/p>\n

I had to do this incredibly technical experiment, re-creating every scene, shot for shot. My visual-effects supervisor, Marcus Taormina, did the work of taking Chris completely out of the movie so Tig could have freedom [to move] within the scenes.<\/p>\n

Some of the trickiest shots were where she\u2019s walking in the group \u2014 I had to match the [camera] pans, and it was difficult to get the perspective to match. It was a few months to get all the individual effects and make it seamless. Marcus was able to fudge it around and get it to work, and [her footage] went in surprisingly easily.<\/p>\n

Q: Now that the film is out, it’s streaming on Netflix and whoa, is in a real movie theater.<\/p>\n

DS: It\u2019s good to be back in the theater, please come back here where humans are in the theaters and it’s sold out.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Q: Final question. It’s hard to pick amongst your darlings but who’s your favorite character in the movie?<\/p>\n

ZS: I don’t really have a favorite, but I will say that I liked everybody equally, Still, they all pretty much die.<\/p>\n

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ARMY OF THE DEAD – TIG NOTARO as PETERS in ARMY OF THE DEAD. Cr. SCOTT GARFIELD\/NETFLIX \u00a9 2021<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Here’s the trailer.<\/p>\n