The fallout from Zack Snyder’s Justice League has been so all-encompassing that the filmmaker’s new movie has now arrived and people still aren’t done talking about the last one, given the popularity of HBO Max’s four-hour exclusive epic.
For all intents and purposes the SnyderVerse is over, but Netflix’s Army of the Dead franchise is just beginning. Prequel Army of Thieves wrapped shooting at the end of last year and animated series Lost Vegas is currently in the works, so the streaming service evidently have big plans for the undead apocalypse.
It’s something of a creative reset and fresh start for Snyder, who returns to the zombie genre for the first time since making his feature debut on the Dawn of the Dead remake seventeen years ago, while it’s also his first non-DCEU effort since 2011’s Sucker Punch, as well as the first time he’s acted as his own cinematographer.
Reviews have largely praised the action and worldbuilding on display, which is the standard for his work, but as always there’s been criticism over an excessive running time and lack of character development. One thing we can definitely guarantee is that Army of the Dead will be shooting straight to the top of the platform’s most-watched list and remaining there for a while to come.
Not only is it the biggest Netflix original movie of 2021 so far, but the high concept premise and promise of bombastic action filtered through the unmistakable lens of Zack Snyder could even see Army of the Dead become one of the streamer’s most popular in-house titles ever, getting the planned multimedia property off to a suitably explosive start now that it’s available to over 200 million subscribers worldwide.