By all accounts, Netflix’s Army of the Dead is already a massive success after rocketing to the top of the platform’s most-watched list just hours after being added to the library yesterday, while it boasts the highest Rotten Tomatoes score of Zack Snyder’s entire career since he made his feature debut seventeen years ago with the Dawn of the Dead remake, making it his least polarizing movie for a long time.
The streaming service have hardly been shy about their intentions to use the zombie heist thriller as the launchpad for a multimedia franchise, with Army of the Dead writing duo Snyder and Shay Hatten scripting prequel Army of Thieves, which focuses on Matthias Schweighöfer’s Ludwig Dieter during the early days of the outbreak, with the actor pulling double duty by directing the film as well.
Hatten also penned every episode of animated companion series Lost Vegas, which sees Dave Bautista, Ella Purnell, Ana de la Reguera, Tig Notaro and Omari Hardwick reprise their live-action roles, where they’ll be joined by a solid supporting ensemble that includes Joe Manganiello, Christian Slater, Vanessa Hudgens, Nolan North and Harry Lennix, so Netflix are clearly sparing no expense to building out the mythology.
In fact, insider Daniel Richtman is now offering up that the platform is planning ten Army of the Dead feature films in total, including sequels and spinoffs. The opener of the first movie certainly ended on a blatant tease for what comes next, and all the signs point to the fact that the shared universe is only just beginning. But whether or not it’ll actually run for as long as Richtman says remains to be seen.
