World War Z: good book, troubled film production. Max Brooks' oral history of a worldwide zombie plague is clever and fun—and at this point, it's the one exception that proves the rule that zombies, as monsters and characters/metaphors/whatever, are totally exhausted.

Brad Pitt's adaptation of World War Z, which appears to trade intimacy for spectacle, looks absolutely nothing like the book—io9 nails when they say it looks "like 2012 with zombies." Which is probably to be expected: a faithful adaptation of World War Z would be a Ken Burns-style mockumentary, and that shit doesn't make money!

But here's the thing: Yeah, it's a bummer that the book is gonna get shafted, but I'm kinda digging what the World War Z movie appears to be doing. The first 45 seconds of that trailer are great—and even if from there on out it feels like an episode of Michael Bay's The Walking Dead, it still looks like something I'd watch. It's impossible to judge a movie by its trailer (the previews for Life of Pi—another film based on a good book, and another film with one or two problems—have been fucking atrocious, but the movie's really solid), and who knows, maybe World War Z will turn out to be as smart as the book. But even if it's just a dumbed-down disaster flick with waves of lemming-like zombies crushing everything in their path? Hell, it'll still be a disaster flick with waves of lemming-like zombies crushing everything in their path.