To all of you Zombie rights activists out there, we have two bits of news for you movie needs today. Firstly, Resident Evil 4 finally got its unsurprising confirmation and the World War Z movie has seen some movement again with a new writer added to formulate the screenplay.

Details after the jump.

Two weeks ago, we heard from Shock Till You Drop that Resident Evil 4 was getting close to becoming a reality and that we’d likely see the finished product sometime next year. Today, Coming Soon found out that it has been confirmed with a release date of September 17, 2010 with Milla Jovovich back as the lead. The fourth installment will be called Resident Evil: Afterlife.

No director has been signed yet but they’ll be working from Paul W.S. Anderson’s script. They’ve scheduled a 2-month shoot in Toronto starting September 28th. Hmmm… My city on my Birthday – not exactly what I expected to get.

Switching over to another potential Zombie franchise, Max Brooks’ World War Z book is moving closer to the silver screen. According to the author, Paramount will have the book adapted by Matthew Michael Carnahan.

Carnahan helped write the Screenplay for this year’s State of Play movie which I thought was brilliant (until the end, that is). He also wrote The Kingdom which I thought was solid so he’ll fit well with this project.

The last we heard on WWZ was last fall when Marc Forster was picked up to direct the film that would be produced by Brad Pitt’s production company, Plan B Productions partnering with Paramount. At that time, the screenplay was to be written by J. Michael Straczynski and apparently the draft he wrote was decent, giving Carnahan a lot to work with.

On Fangoria Radio, Brooks had this to say about the addition of Carnahan:

“He’s one of Hollywood’s hot A-list writers, so if they went after him and paid him a mountain of gold, it definitely shows their confidence in this project”

World War Z is the 2006 best-selling novel written by Max Brooks about a future global war against zombies. It is written in the form of interviews featuring multiple survivor perspectives from all over the world recounting their individual struggles throughout the war.

What do you think about these two projects?

I could pass on RE4 but I’m looking forward to seeing something come out of WWZ.

Sources: Fangoria, Production Weekly (via Coming Soon)

World War Z is the 2006 best-selling novel written by Max Brooks about a future global war against zombies. It is written in the form of interviews featuring multiple survivor perspectives from all over the world recounting their individual struggles throughout the war.

The novel began its translation to the big screen early last year when it was announced that Brad Pitt’s production company, Plan B Productions, would be partnering with Paramount to produce the film. J. Michael Straczynski, who wrote the recent Changeling, was selected to write the screenplay.

I haven’t read the book yet even though it’s sitting here on the desk beside me. I hear a lot of great things about it through my brother who’s a big fan of the zombie genre – maybe I’ll start reading it tonight.

The movie sounds like an incredible idea to me and it will be very interesting to see this kind of film in the style of a series of separate stories (different recollections of events in the many “plague years”). With the right cast and marketing, this could be one of the summer tent-poles of 2010.

World War Z is expected to release sometime in 2010 and there’s no word yet whether or not Brad Pitt will be acting in it.

Source: Variety