Brad Pitt’s feature film based off the amazing “zombie war oral history” book World War Z is allegedly in shambles. With a budget raising up to $170 million and five weeks of possible reshoots, what went wrong with this movie?

The Hollywood Reporter has a behind-the-scenes look at what went awry. Apparently Quantum of Solace director Marc Forster never found a voice for this “headless production”:

Trouble emerged early: Three weeks before shooting was to begin in June 2011, sources say Forster had not made critical decisions about what the zombies would look like and how they would move. “They just couldn’t get it right,” one insider says. “There was a lot of spinning of plates, a lot of talking. [But] they did not have a plan.” [...]

“The director was not empowered,” says one insider. “There was nobody that steered the ship [...] When you get [a director] who can’t do it all [...] you get a struggle as to whose is the singular voice.”

The production has been plagued with other unusual problems:

Then in October, proceedings were disrupted when a Hungarian anti-terrorism unit raided an airport warehouse and confiscated 85 fully functional automatic assault rifles that were to be used on the shoot. (The guns were not supposed to be operational, and it is illegal to transport such weapons into the country.) With the movie already behind schedule and over budget, Pitt was said to be livid at the mistake – and perhaps wearying of a project that was showing no sign of ending.

And word is there’s some consensus that Paramount really should have pulled the plug earlier on this project. Now that World War Z has tumbled down the rabbit hole of a Hollywood disaster, will the film be shelved entirely?