Netflix has provided the first look at Zack Snyder's upcoming zombie heist film Army of the Dead, and it looks as action-packed as you'd expect. The movie, Snyder's second zombie film after his 2004 feature debut, Dawn of the Dead, stars an ensemble cast lead by former wrestler Dave Bautista. It follows a group of mercenaries who attempt to break into a casino vault in Las Vegas in the middle of a zombie outbreak in order to pull of a massive heist while simultaneously fighting off zombies.
The much-anticipated movie is Snyder's first with the streaming service, and has clearly impressed the executives at Netflix as a prequel series as well as a spin-off movie have already been green lit. In fact, the prequel has already completed filming. The Army of the Dead is expected to take Snyder back to his slow-motion gritty action roots, after he spent the better part of the past decade working on superhero movies for DC and Warner Bros. He's currently finishing work on Army while he completes his tenure with the DC Extended Universe, finishing post-production on his Justice League: Director's Cut, set to be released in four part on HBO Max in March 2021.
Now, the first footage from Army of the Dead has debuted as part of Netflix's 2021 movie promo. The promo gives fans a sneak peek at a number of Netflix's major movie releases for the year, including the likes of Red Notice, To All The Boys 3 and 25 other movies. The Army of the Dead sneak peek is introduced by Bautista, and includes a shot of a helicopter flying over Las Vegas at sunset as well as a brief glimpse of the star and his team of mercenaries shooting at something in typical Snyder slow motion style. You can see the footage at 1:15 in the video below:
The footage is admittedly very short, but there's no doubt, thanks to the slo-mo, that it was directed by Snyder. There's also a glimpse of the vault the mercenaries break into, as seen in the first-look images released for the movie last week. It's clear that the movie will not necessarily be about the difficulty of getting into the vault and grabbing the loot, so much as it's going to be about getting out of the zombie-infested city with the stolen loot intact.
For the few fans who were disappointed by Snyder's superhero movies and their overly serious, dark tone, the hope is that Army of the Dead will be a return to the more fun and anarchic tone of his debut. It's also a chance for Snyder to tell a new, original story without the constraints of a major superhero property attached, which had limited his creative approach in the DC universe. All signs are that Army of the Dead is set to be 100% Snyder.
Source: Netflix