THE THING prequel is about to hit stateside any day now and before it has even come out, director and enemy of spell checkers everywhere Matthijs Van Heijningen Jr already has his next project lined up. Some time ago it was reported that DAWN OF THE DEAD and 300 director Zack Snyder would return to the zombie genre and produce a film called ARMY OF THE DEAD. The film was a victim of the financial crisis and plans for the film were shelved. Now it might be back on with Snyder in a producer capacity and Van Heijningen directing the film.

The film was about three months out of production before the crisis took hold and Van Heijningen has said in a recent interview that it was a very promising sounding project. Little was known about it at the time and it turns out that Van Heijningen was the intended director all along. As there is already a lot of pre-production work that has been done it shouldn’t be too hard to get the ball rolling again.

Not much is known of the plot except that it takes place in a quarantined Las Vegas in the near future after a zombie plague has broken out. A distraught father has to team up with some mercenary types to get his daughter out of the doomed city.

This all probably rests on the shoulders of THE THING and whether it’s a success or not. If it hits big expect this to get the green light. If not then Van Heijningen will join the ever increasing ranks of commercial directors who were ‘one and done’ in Hollywood.

Personally I am tired of the zombie genre now, with WORLD WAR Z coming out next year it feels like the genre should be laid to rest for a while after that.

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