Brad Pitt Returns: Edward Berger to Direct World War Z 2

It took a decade of starts and stops, a near-directorial marriage to David Fincher that unraveled over budgets, and a studio shake-up — but the World War Z sequel is finally moving forward.

Paramount has quietly closed deals to bring Brad Pitt back as the franchise lead and to install Edward Berger behind the camera. Berger, fresh off finishing The Riders with Pitt for A24 and Scott Free, will also serve as an executive producer while Dennis Kelly has been tapped to write the screenplay. Plan B Entertainment—Pitt alongside Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner—returns to produce, and Skydance remains a vocal supporter, with founder David Ellison among those pushing to revive the zombie epic.

The original World War Z, released in 2013 and adapted from Max Brooks’s 2006 oral-history novel, surprised skeptics by grossing over $540 million worldwide. But plans for a follow-up stalled for years. At one point David Fincher was circling as director; then financing frictions halted progress. The project reemerged last summer after Josh Greenstein and Dana Goldberg — now joint heads at Paramount — made the sequel a priority, even reiterating the studio’s commitment on the CinemaCon stage.

Pitt’s persistence has been a throughline. He’s championed a return to this universe for more than a decade. Sources say his collaboration with Berger on The Riders convinced both men the director was the right fit for a global-scale, character-driven sequel. Talks with the studio intensified during The Riders’ production, and contracts for Pitt and Berger were finalized in recent weeks.

This next chapter preserves the strong working relationship between Pitt and Paramount. The actor’s slate is busy: Heart of the Beast, reuniting him with David Ayer of Fury, opens next weekend, and later this year he’ll reappear as Cliff Booth in Netflix’s The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth — the character he originated in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, a performance that earned him an Academy Award.

Story details for World War Z 2 remain under wraps, which is exactly the kind of hush that fuels rumor mills. But with a skilled director at the helm, a seasoned writer on the script, Plan B and Skydance backing production, and Pitt returning to lead the charge, the sequel feels less like wishful thinking and more like a carefully plotted resurrection.

When will cameras roll? Who else will join Pitt on the front lines? For now, the industry watches and waits — and the prospect of a new global-scale zombie thriller has never looked more real.