Army of the Dead
Short description
After a zombie outbreak overruns Las Vegas, the city is sealed off behind quarantine walls and left to the undead. A group of mercenaries is hired to slip inside the containment zone and carry out a robbery that would be impossible under normal circumstances. The job puts them among the infected, and the danger is not limited to what is waiting within the walls.
Zack Snyder directed the film and wrote the screenplay with Joby Harold and Shay Hatten, producing through The Stone Quarry with Wesley Coller and Deborah Snyder. It is the eleventh of fifteen films he has directed, arriving between Zack Snyder's Justice League and Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire. Dave Bautista leads the cast as Scott Ward, alongside Ella Purnell as Kate Ward, Omari Hardwick as Vanderohe, Ana de la Reguera as Maria Cruz, Theo Rossi as Burt Cummings and Matthias Schweighöfer as Ludwig Dieter. The production involved 60 credited cast members and 157 credited crew.
Made for about 90 million dollars, the film took in roughly 191 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds 5.8 out of 10 from 200,000 votes, while on TMDB it has 6.2 out of 10 from 4,543 votes. A critics' rating of 6.1 out of 10 from 290 reviews places it close to the audience scores. Running 148 minutes, it mixes action, crime, drama, horror, science fiction and thriller elements.
What's left behind the scenes
- All scenes with Tig Notaro were filmed alone. This was because she had recovered from cancer, and filming took place during the height of the coronavirus pandemic. Dave Bautista was not personally acquainted with Notaro; they had never even met, although they appear together in several scenes in the film. Notaro's image was simply inserted into these scenes using digital technology.
- The zombies wore contact lenses of various types. At the beginning of a person's transformation into a zombie, the contact lenses made it appear as if blood was leaking from their eyes, then the eyes became increasingly red, and the amount of blood seemed to grow. In the end, the lenses were completely white. All the contact lenses – over 60 sets – were created by Kristina Patterson.
- Work on the film began in 2009 when Zack Snyder wrote the screenplay, but he declined to direct due to commitments to other projects. James Gunn was considered as a director for a time, but he ultimately turned down the offer. In 2011, it was announced that Mattias van Heijningen Jr. would be directing the film, and it would be released in the fall of 2013. In 2012, van Heijningen Jr. announced his departure from the project, and it was shelved again until 2018.
- Chris D'Elia played the role of the helicopter pilot, but the actor was accused of sexual harassment. It was impossible to gather all the actors for reshoots, so he was replaced by Tig Notaro in post-production.
- Filming the opening scene of the film, where the military encounter alpha zombies, proved to be the most exhausting and took five weeks, as Zack Snyder absolutely wanted this scene to take place at dusk.
- 2,500 plastic skeletons were dressed and laid out on the set.
- The actors playing zombies had to undergo a basic training course, mainly to learn how to handle weapons. One of them, Matthias Schweighöfer, already had relevant training, so he had to try to look more clumsy and less prepared.
- Dave Bautista turned down a role in 'The Suicide Squad' in order to film in this movie.
- Everything the actors touched and walked on was real. Everything else, including the rooftops of buildings and the outline of Las Vegas against the sky, was created using computer technology.
- The zombie horse ridden by Zeus through the ruins of Las Vegas was conceived by Gabriel Bartalos. Justin Raleigh, who was responsible for the makeup, said that many layers of makeup were applied to a real horse: a layer depicting bones and muscles, a layer depicting skin on top of it, and then veins and makeup on the muzzle were added in small pieces.
- For several years, Zack Snyder purchased vintage Canon Dream Lens lenses from the 1960s online, and then had to create a customized digital camera to use these lenses for filming the movie.
- During the filming of the car collision scene at the beginning of the film, the camera was deliberately destroyed to realistically show the crash from the passengers' point of view.
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