By MICHAEL GINGOLD
An undead epic that Zack Snyder first attempted to launch in 2008 has been reconceived and will now be a Netflix original, with a busy action star in the lead.
Deadline reports that Dave Bautista will star in ARMY OF THE DEAD, which Snyder (pictured below) will direct on a $70-million budget for Netflix. Back in ’08, Snyder (who made his feature debut with the DAWN OF THE DEAD update) was preparing to produce ARMY, with Matthijs van Heijningen (THE THING “premake”) directing from a script by Joby Harold about a father trying to rescue his young daughter in a Las Vegas overrun with zombies. The new incarnation, written by Snyder and Shay Hatten, involves a group of mercenaries attempting to pull off a major heist in a quarantined, ghoul-infested Vegas. Snyder is also producing with his wife Deborah. Bautista will next be seen in Yuen Woo-ping’s martial-arts extravaganza MASTER Z: IP MAN LEGACY, opening April 12, then as Drax in AVENGERS: ENDGAME two weeks later and Fox/Disney’s STUBER July 12.
