The annoying marketing trend of trailers for trailers doesn't look to be going away any time soon, probably because everyone keeps reporting on them. Sorry. On which note, here's a teaser for the trailer for the troubled Brad Pitt zombie apocalypse **World War Z, heralding its debut on US magazine show Entertainment Tonight on Thursday. It's the first official footage anyone's seen online though, so at least it's a big-ish deal.
Is there much to be learned? The main impression you'll come away with is a sense of scale, with wide shots of general devastation and thousands of extras (whether they be real or of the CG kind). The military takes aim as an inexorable wave of zombies breaks over it, and there are several further shots of flowing undead hordes. These are zombies of the fast variety, so there's a lot of running, and several aerial shots of widespread city destruction. And with some serious shades of I Am Legend, there's a destroyed bridge, and what looks like a mass evacuation in the middle of which Pitt is struggling to keep sight of his family.
How faithful the film remains to Max Brooks' excellent novel remains to be seen, but the basic jist involves a zombie pandemic that the narrative tracks from outbreak to global disaster to human fightback. Director Marc Forster (Quantum Of Solace) said in the early days that his offbeat take on the material was along the lines of** All The President's Men**. But with huge recent rewrites thrashed out by Damon Lindelof (Prometheus) and implemented by Drew Goddard (Cabin In The Woods), and a massive seven weeks of reshoots this autumn following the main production last year, it's unclear how far the film has drifted from Forster's initial vision.
As we said, there'll be a longer look at a proper trailer later in the week. World War Z is finally released, several months later than initially planned, on June 21 next year.