It's fairly surprising that it's taken this long for a World War Z movie to get made. There are few sub-genres more popular than zombies nowadays, the Max Brooks book is a must-own for any fan of the undead and Brad Pitt and Marc Forster have been attached for years. With Paramount finding a co-financer earlier this year, however, the film was finally able to pull itself out of development hell and start production to prepare for a 2012 release date. But guess what? It's run into another big problem.

Vulture reports that both Matthew Fox and Ed Harris, who entered talks for the project a couple weeks ago, have pulled out, leaving Forster and the crew scrambling to find replacements. While the reasons behind Harris' departure is unknown, Fox was forced to pull out due to a scheduling conflict with I, Alex Cross, in which he will be playing a villain. Making the situation all the more difficult is that the movie is currently lensing in Malta, meaning that new actors have to be found quickly (the search is already on in London and Los Angeles). The story, adapted by J. Michael Straczynski, has Brooks (Pitt) as a journalist traveling around the world collecting stories of those that survived World War Z: a globe-spanning battle between humans and zombies that almost wiped out existence.

This is just a case of bad luck. It's as though some omnipotent force out there was saying, "This production doesn't have enough problems, so I'm going to make two of the most recognizable names on the cast list disappear." Still, just as long as they don't epically fuck up the Battle of Yonkers, I will continue to highly anticipate the film's release.