Marco Beltrami has signed on to score the post-apocalyptic horror thriller World War Z. The movie is directed by Marc Forster (Finding Neverland, Monster’s Ball, Quantum of Solace) and stars Brad Pitt as a U.N. employee who scours the world, interviewing survivors of a Zombie apocalypse. Mireille Enos, James Badge Dale, Bryan Cranston and David Morse are co-starring. The film is based on the bestselling novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War written by Max Brooks, which is set 10 years after a global zombie epidemic. J. Michael Straczynski (The Changeling) and Matthew Michael Carnahan (The Kingdom) have written the screenplay and Pitt is producing the big-budget film with Dede Gardner (The Tree of Life) and Jeremy Kleiner. World War Z is scheduled to be released on December 22, 2012 by Paramount Pictures.
Beltrami is also set to write the music for the action thriller A Good Day to Die Hard. The project marks the composer’s second movie in the Die Hard series following 2007’s Live Free or Die Hard. The movie reunites Beltrami with director John Moore who has worked with the composer on his previous three features Flight of the Phoenix, The Omen and Max Payne. The film stars Bruce Willis who returns as John McClane who is traveling to Russia to save his son from a terrorist plot. Skip Woods (Swordfish, The A-Team) is writing the script and Alex Young (Unstoppable) and Michael Fotrell (Fast Five, Live Free or Die Hard) are producing. The movie is currently in pre-production and will shoot early next year in Russia. The fifth Die Hard installment is scheduled for a release on February 14, 2013 by 20th Century Fox.
The composer is also attached to the epic drama Paradise Lost based on John Milton’s 17-century poem about a war in heaven and the rivalry between the archangel’s Michael and Lucifer. The film is directed by Alex Proyas who previously collaborated with Beltrami on I, Robot and Knowing. The Legendary Pictures production was set for a shoot in early 2012 and has recently been put on old for budgetary reasons. Bradley Cooper, Benjamin Walker, Rufus Sewell, Dominic Purcell, Callan McAuliff, Camilla Belle and Casey Affleck were committed to star and Vincent Newman (A Man Apart) is producing. A production start date next year is still expected.
Beltrami’s other upcoming movies include The Woman in Black, The Surrogate and Blackbird, all of which have already been recorded.
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