First Look: Zack Snyder’s Zombie Heist Flick Army Of The Dead, Starring Dave Bautista

Superheroes and zombies. Two things Zack Snyder fans can expect from the director in 2021.

Unless you live under a rock, you probably heard that Snyder has in the works a new version of his arthouse movie Justice League, recut as a four-part mini-series for HBO Max. And there’s Army of the Dead, his zombie heist movie for Netflix.

Set in a post-apocalyptic Las Vegas, Army of the Dead follows a group of mercenaries as they venture into the quarantine zone to — per official synopsis — “pull off the greatest heist ever attempted”. Sounds like Ocean’s 11 meets 28 Days Later.

The movie stars Dave Bautista, Ana de la Reguera, Matthias Schweighöfer, Ella Purnell, and Tig Notaro.

“It is a full-blown, balls-to-the-wall zombie heist movie, so it's genre-on-genre in a great way,” teased Snyder in an Entertainment Weekly interview. “So you expect pure zombie mayhem, and you get that, 100 per cent. But also you get these really amazing characters on a fantastic journey. It's going to surprise people that there's a lot of warmth and real emotion with these great characters."

Army of the Dead isn’t Snyder’s first zombie pic; the one-time commercial maker made his feature directorial debut with 2004’s Dawn of the Dead, a remake of the George R Romero classic.

“With Dawn, we made a zombie movie but tried to do it all the way with all of those tropes of the genre,” Snyder said. “That was so fun, so I started to think of what were other genres that story didn’t have room for. It’s this tone where you have fun with the genre but you don’t make fun of the genre — it’s a fine line.”

No release date has been set for Army of the Dead but Netflix is already working on a prequel (production wrapped last month!) as well as an anime spin-off called Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas.

Photos: Clay Enos/Netflix