World War Z director talks alternative Russian ending

As we've heard previously, the ending of 'World War Z' was going to be rather different from the one that finally appeared in the movie.

[Plot spoilers below]

Originally, there was set to be a full-scale battle sequence taking place in Russia with thousands of zombies flooding Moscow in what sounded like a herculean set-piece.

But in the end, a more intimate ending was chosen instead – one of the reasons that the film's release was delayed.

[World War Z becomes Brad Pitt's highest-grossing movie]

Now director Marc Foster has detailed what was going to happen in the scrapped ending.

“Basically in the original ending, after the Israel sequence and the plane crash, Gerry is in Russia, and the storyline of what he finds out at the WHO (World Health Organisation) lab is what he finds in Russia but he applies his theory in a battlefield setting,” the filmmaker told Movies.com.

“We called it 'The Battle of Moscow', and it's a huge battle with zombies and multiple other characters and ultimately Gerry defeats them by realising that the zombies avoid him and go around him [after injecting himself with a virus].

“So it's in Russia, at night, in a snowstorm with thousands of zombies and big battles; kind of the scope of the Israel sequence.Some of that footage is still in the film, you see it during the montage when Gerry journeys back to his family on that small boat, we see a few glimpses from that battle.

“We never finished that footage because we all agreed after Israel and the plane crash you're battle fatigued and you really want the movie to be more quiet and you don't want it to go into another huge combat situation.

“I don’t think you’ll ever see the Russia sequence, because we never really finished it; we never spent the money to do the visual effects. Once we shot it and we did a rough cut, everyone agreed that this is too big and too exhausting, it would be better to go a simpler route.

“I felt going against the grain and doing something more quiet and simple will be so much interesting and refreshing and something that we’re not used to,” he said.

The film, though dogged with rumour about its troubled production, went on to be Brad Pitt's biggest ever hit, making more than $500 million (£314 million) worldwide.

Pitt is mulling a sequel, telling trade mag Variety: "We're certainly talking about it, yeah. We have so many ideas on the table from just the time we spent developing this thing and figuring out how zombie worlds work.

“We have so many ideas and so much information, we think we have a lot of stuff to mine from. We're going to do our best and see what we get out of it.”

He also told Yahoo Movies that his team had ideas for a 'World War Z' trilogy.

Watch the interview below.