2013’s World War Z was one of the biggest hits of Brad Pitt’s career, but Variety is reporting that Paramount has just pulled its long-in-the-works sequel from the release schedule. The film was supposed to open this June against Tom Cruise’s The Mummy, so there’s a chance Paramount got scared off, but the fact that we haven’t heard anything about the World War Z sequel for a while does seem like a red flag. Also, as an interesting side note, Variety says the film hasn’t been canned entirely and has been moved to a different release date, but the studio hasn’t actually announced what that date is, so that sounds like another bad sign.
Meanwhile, Paramount has also pulled its Friday The 13th reboot, which was supposed to open in October. There’s even less information about its future, though, so it could end up on the proverbial shelf for a while. Thankfully, for people really excited to see a Paramount movie in October, the studio has replaced Friday The 13th with Mother!, the new Darren Aronofsky film starring Jennifer Lawrence. It will open on October 13.
UPDATE: And now The Hollywood Reporter says that Friday The 13th has been cancelled, with production shutting down just a few weeks before principal photography was set to begin. Apparently, the poor performance of Rings was a big part of this, and someone involved with the production of Friday The 13th has said that it was simply “not ready to go” just yet.