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Brad Pitt's zombie virus becomes 'Moscow flu' to appease the Chinese

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發表於 2013-4-8 16:32:45 | 顯示全部樓層 |閱讀模式
BY:JOHN HARLOW From: The Times April 08, 2013 12:00AM


A still from the upcoming film World War Z starring Brad Pitt.


FOR seven years, Brad Pitt has been warding off flesh-eating monsters and Hollywood executives to bring his $US250 million ($240m) dream of a zombie plague movie to the cinema.

But after an epic journey of script rewrites and expensive reshoots, Pitt has been blindsided by Chinese censors who have threatened to ban the film unless he makes a "special edition" for them.

Pitt and director Marc Forster have agreed to make the film more China-friendly, at least for Chinese audiences. So World War Z, due for release in Australia in June, has become not only the most expensive zombie picture yet made but also a curtain-raiser for a time when blockbusters will be made in "sibling" versions.

One will be shot for Western audiences and a significantly different film will be made for China.

This goes far beyond the degree of censorship that has become familiar in recent years. Beijing officials removed 13 minutes from Men in Black 3, erasing scenes from New York's Chinatown, and 40 minutes from Cloud Atlas.


The State Administration of Radio Film and Television now wants foreign film-makers to add dialogue, subplots and even extra actors to cast China in a more flattering light.

In World War Z Pitt plays a UN crisis manager searching for the cause of a plague that threatens to devastate the world. Unlike the traditional low-budget zombie movie, in which well-fed survivors hide in supermarkets fighting off the brain-sucking hordes, an emaciated Pitt witnesses computer-generated undead swarming up a 15m Israeli defence wall and laying waste to Philadelphia in scenes shot in Glasgow.

In the Western version of the film, Pitt identifies the source as China, comparing it to the SARS outbreak in 2003.

In the Chinese version, according to the latest revisions suggested by Pitt's backers at Paramount, there will be scenes shot in Belgrade where the plague is described as Moscow flu and said to have originated in a military complex. The virus is identified for the first time by a heroic Chinese scientist.

Pitt, 49, has been a film star for 20 years but this is his most ambitious plan to build his own movie series. In 2006, he outbid Leonardo DiCaprio for the rights to the film World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks, son of comedy writer and director Mel Brooks.

The production has been beset by troubles, including the loss of all its prop weapons to Hungarian anti-terrorist police.

"This movie has taken so long to get right that adjusting plot points is a small price to pay for a new audience," a Paramount executive said. "But I don't think anyone saw China as this all-important force when we started in 2006."

According to the Motion Picture Association of America, China could overtake the US to become the biggest movie market in the world by 2020.

Film-makers already tweak their projects before the cameras roll to flatter Chinese sensibilities. In the science fiction hit Looper the future world capital was relocated from Paris to Beijing.

But now the Chinese government wants more.

Last week, Marvel -- which has already removed the Han origins of a villainous character in Iron Man 3 called the Mandarin, played by Ben Kingsley -- announced it would release an "alternative" version for China.

This will feature Fan Bingbing, the country's most popular film actress. She has said she gave a day's work as a "favour" to the Western film-makers. It will also include scenes shot in Beijing that will not be screened outside China.

Michael Bay's fourth chapter of the Transformers franchise starts shooting in Beijing in June with Mark Wahlberg and Nicola Peltz. Up to 10 minutes of the film could feature Chinese actors who are not expected to appear in the Western version.

The Sunday Times
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