'World War Z' trailer: Brad Pitt's big-budget zombie flick [VIDEO]

Directed by Marc Forster ("Quantum of Solace," "Finding Neverland"), the film stars Brad Pitt as Gerald Lane, a United Nations researcher in the midst of civilization on the brink of collapse, driven to save humanity from an impending zombie apocalypse.

Plagued by production problems, script rewrites and release date delays, fans of Max Brooks' 2006 novel "World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War" have been wondering whether the Pitt film adaptation would prove watchable, or if it would even come. But the trailer for "World War Z," Hollywood's most expensive zombie movie ever, is here at last, and it's full of explosions, toppling buildings and other apocalyptic tropes.

One thing, however, feels different. Judging by the trailer, in which the undead scramble like locusts up buildings and sprint after terrified families, "World War Z's" zombies are unusually fast.

The film's visual effects supervisor John Nelson researched animal behavior to help them envision zombies more as "predatory animals" than as the lethargic supernatural shufflers of previous incarnations:

They move like birds or school of fish, too, in reactive formations, and it’s not because they have a higher level of [shared] thinking or communication – it’s about their nature and the fact that their instinct to infect is so basic, efficient, and overpowering. They will go through anything. If they lose both legs, they will walk on their hands. They lock in and they’re like salmon going upstream or sperm swimming to be the first to egg.

"World War Z" opens next June.

[Entertainment Weekly]