The zombie apocalypse/geo-political thriller World War Z, currently filming in Hungary, met with some real-life trouble today after a Hungarian anti-terrorism squad confiscated 85 fully functional “prop” guns meant to be used on set during filming. According to THR, the Hungarian authorities raided a warehouse near the film’s Budapest set and seized 85 fully functional automatic and military-style assault weapons.
The problem wasn’t that World War Z filmmakers had stashed prop guns in a warehouse near the set, the problem was that the guns weren’t just props, they were fully functional weapons. The guns were flown in via a private plane, wrapped in company-marked packaging and delivered to an individual in Budapest. According to the director of Hungary’s Anti-Terrorism Unit, “guns like these are highly illegal to transport even if they were used as stage guns, which hopefully they weren’t.”
Authorities are interrogating witnesses now, so we should hear more in the near future regarding the fate of World War Z set weapons. I don’t find it too surprising that the push for cinematic realism has led to something like this, I only wonder who is supposed to be responsible for keeping prop guns non-functional and safe. I certainly wouldn’t want to be running around on a set with fully functional military-style assault weapons firing over my head.
World War Z stars Brad Pitt, who plays main character Gerry Lane, a United Nations employee who finds himself in a race against time as a zombie pandemic starts toppling governments and armies and threatening all of humanity. He must race around the globe, trying to stop the onslaught and also recording first-hand interviews with the survivors, records meant to last through the “plague years”.
World War Z is set to hit theaters on December 21, 2012 (if they don’ have to restock their entire prop weapons arsenal, or if the filmmakers aren’t all chucked into a Hungarian prison).