Earlier this year, Zack Snyder unleashed his first original movie in nearly a decade – zombie epic Army Of The Dead, which saw a group of mercenaries enter an undead-ravaged Las Vegas in search of a $200 million bounty. Of course, the mission goes horribly wrong and the crew – led by Dave Bautista’s Scott Ward – is left scrambling for their lives in the post-apocalyptic Sin City, among them Matthias Schweighöfer’s safecracker Dieter. And for fans who grew particularly attached to Dieter, you’re in luck – he’s at the centre of his own spin-off filmArmy Of Thieves, produced by Snyder and directed by Schweighöfer himself.
Set years prior to the events of Army Of The Dead, Army Of Thieves follows the master safecracker on an earlier ambitious heist job, working alongside (and finding himself besotted by) Nathalie Emmanuel’s Gwendoline. If there’s connective tissue, between the two films, the man behind it promises a different experience than Snyder’s go-for-broke action-horror. “I’m constantly talking to Zack,” Schweighöfer tells Empire. “‘Okay, what could be different to Army? What is the same?’ It is part of the universe, but a totally different movie. It’s an adventurous heist movie.”
The key difference? “There’s not really any zombies,” says Emmanuel – though the Vegas outbreak has begun as Thieves unfolds. “We see that it’s happening somewhere else, but it’s relevant because it’s this impending potential danger for the whole world.”
Read Empire’s full Army Of Thieves story in the Celebration Of Edgar Wright issue – on newsstands from Thursday 2 September, and available to pre-order online here. Army Of Thieves is coming soon to Netflix.