David Fincher says his involvement with forthcoming sequel World War Z 2 is entirely dependent on the quality of the script. The original World War Z weathered a famously troubled production, where star Brad Pitt allegedly clashed with director Marc Forster and filming delays led to costly budget overruns.

The film even reshot its entire third act, resulting in an expensive battle sequence in Russia being completely removed. Despite World War Z’s well-publicized troubles, the film still ended up being a hit, and talk of a sequel soon popped up. J.A. Bayona signed on as director but departed in 2016 to helm Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom instead. People were surprised to hear David Fincher was circling the project in the months afterwards – and downright stunned when he officially signed on in June 2017.

Talk of World War Z 2 has been quiet since then. However, in a new interview with the Empire Podcast, Fincher briefly touched on the sequel’s status. When answering a question about his current projects, the director had this to say:

It sounds like Fincher won’t be moving ahead on the sequel until he’s has a story he’s happy with, so his involvement isn’t necessarily certain. It would be interesting to see what a filmmaker like Fincher would do with a mega-budget blockbuster, especially if he’s given creative control. The director’s last brush with a big franchise sequel was his debut feature Alien 3; given his nightmarish experience making that, his caution approaching World War Z 2 is understandable.

“I worked on a show for HBO that didn’t see the light of day and at the same time was doing [Mindhunter], and did [Mindhunter] and I’ve been working for about a year now with Dennis Kelly on World War Z…We’re hoping to get a piece of material that’s a reason to make a movie, not an excuse to make a movie.”

Hopefully, the sequel will also draw further inspiration from Max Brooks’ excellent source novel. World War Z used little of the book outside of the title and basic concept; a decision that disappointed fans of the novel and the author himself. There are so many fantastic sequences and characters ripe for cinematic adaptation. The original movie also suffered somewhat from its PG-13 rating, and this effort to tone down the gore ultimately made it feel a little tame.

There’s currently no set release date for World War Z 2, but we’ll keep you updated when more information on the project arrives.

Source: Empire Podcast