Daily Dialogue — September 20, 2019

“We’ve lost entire cities… We still don’t know how it started… We bought ourselves some time… It gives us a chance… Others have found a way to push back… Be prepared for anything.”

— World War Z (2013), screenplay by Matthew Michael Carnahan and Drew Goddard & Damon Lindelof, screen story by Matthew Michael Carnahan and J. Michael Straczynski, novel by Max Brooks

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Zombies.

Trivia: Max Brooks publicly stated that he felt the film had very little in common with his book beyond the central storyline.

Dialogue On Dialogue: The dialogue is the V.O. narration by the story’s Protagonist Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) over the movie’s extended Denouement sequence which you can see here.

It is substantially different than the original movie’s ending which you can learn about here.

There’s a takeaway for screenwriters: Hollywood likes happy endings. The emotional resolution of Protagonist reuniting with his family and a sense of hope in turning the tide against the zombie infestation worked much better for the film and apparently at the box office as well.