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Newcomer Matthijs to helm Army of the Dead

Matthijs van Hiejningen will make his directorial debut with Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead. Matthijs is a visual artist and commercial filmmaker. Check out some of his work at /film. Why did Zack choose a newcomer to help such an important project? “We were looking for an inventive talent with a unique voice and we found it in Matthijs.” Zack explains. He has the “ability to infuse humor with irony allows him to create compelling stories in 30 seconds.”

The story is based on an original idea by Snyder, and the screenplay is penned by Joby Harold. It will be kind of like Saving Private Ryan, but with zombies in Las Vegas. Joby Harold wrote the screenplay based on an original idea by Snyder Zack’s wife, Deborah Snyder, informs us that “something happened in Vegas and there was this huge outbreak of these zombies that were killing people. So to contain it they basically contain Vegas. The city is this wasteland with walls around it and all of these zombies are inside. One of our characters goes in there to investigate and gets trapped inside and her father goes in to search for her. He can’t do it alone so he gets a group of mercenaries under the guise that there’s money still in the casinos, because they don’t care about his daughter.”

The producer of Dawn of the Dead and screenplay writer for 300, Zack Snyder, has described the film as a “zombie movie on the scale that” hasn’t been done before.With a new generation of high quality zombie films with fresh looks at the frightening affliction, this this looks to be an epic adventure with plenty of scares and laughs. It is due out sometime in 2009. Check back for updates.

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