Interview: Marc Forster, Director of 'World War Z'

Last week I was lucky enough to be involved with four other journalists in a roundtable junket interview with the director of World War Z, Marc Forster. We fired off a couple of questions each and this is what Marc had to say about the film.

With many Zombie films previously made and with TV shows like The Walking Dead, how do you put out a Zombie film that is different from anything we have seen before?

MF: For me I didn’t see it only as a Zombie movie I wanted to make an apocalyptic thriller, to extend the genre in that sense. I felt like I wanted to create my own Zombies – the way that they move, the make-up – and ultimately have this intimate family story at the heart of the movie and surround it with a large-scale worldwide epidemic.

When you look back to some of your earliest films as a director this is such a long way away from them. Did you ever expect to be going down the action blockbuster route, and in that respect is this something you want to continue?

MF: I love all kinds of genre and mixing it up. Every genre has its own challenge and that’s where my passion lies. I don’t see myself solely as an action director so I will definitely make smaller films again as well, but I was passionate about the subject matter and about the possibilities of creating this blockbuster. On the other hand there was a second tier of social-political backdrop and the opportunity to work with Brad. That combination, I thought, could lead to something interesting. I’m not sure whether I will do more of these movies, as I don’t really plan. My decisions are intuitive. After Quantum of Solace they offered me Skyfall but I didn’t want to do Skyfall. Finally, I had time to develop a script for years, because we only had three months to develop the script for Quantum, and I just wanted to do something else.

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