Why Army of the Dead's Team Care About Money in Zombie Apocalypse

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Army of the Dead promises some intense R-rated action from its “zombie heist movie” premise, but why does anyone care about money during a zombie apocalypse? Hot on the heels of the release of Zack Snyder's Justice League, another of the helmer’s long-gestating projects will come to fruition with the upcoming release of Army of the Dead.

In development since way back in 2007, a few short years after Snyder remade George A. Romero’s iconic horror Dawn of the Dead, Army of the Dead is an action-packed horror that asks viewers, what if a crew of thieves had to pull off an audacious heist of a Las Vegas casino—in the middle of a zombie apocalypse? It is a clever premise that Snyder has reportedly wanted to work on since his propulsive Dawn of the Dead re-do was released, and one that the director has an entire ambitious cinematic universe planned around.

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There is just one major question that has been bothering many movie fans since the premise of Army of the Dead was first shared: if the world is ending thanks to a zombie apocalypse, why does anyone still care enough about money to bother with the casino heist that the movie’s story revolves around? A fair inquiry for sure, but luckily one the movie can answer. While the action of Army of the Dead happens after a zombie outbreak, the zombies are still contained in Las Vegas and the rest of the world operates mostly normally, so money still matters the same way it did pre-apocalypse. The reason the mercenaries the movie centers around are going into Vegas to get the money is that otherwise the casino's take will be nuked and destroyed alongside the rest of the desert city when the government tries to take out the remaining zombies. Hence the casino owner hiring them.

It’s a reasonably solid excuse for the real reason that Army of the Dead’s heist takes place during the zombie apocalypse, which is that combining the two tired sub-genres could hopefully breathe a little bit of life back into them. Locked Down’s COVID-centric heist plot flopped with critics despite the relative success of star Anne Hathaway’s earlier heist movie effort Ocean’s 8 and broadly speaking the heist sub-genre has been faring better on the small screen in recent years than in cinemas. Meanwhile, zombies have struggled to draw in crowds too, meaning Army of the Dead is an ambitious attempt to revive two ailing genres.

The ambitious flick is set to be released soon but comes at a time when critically-dismissed efforts like Zombieland: Double Tap and The Dead Don’t Die have proven that many viewer's appetites for the roaming undead may be limited. However, if anyone can make zombies work the man who mangled to redeem Jared Leto’s Joker in a Justice League cameo is the director for the job. Hopes are high among zombie movie fans, but ultimately the answer to whether Army of the Dead’s zombie heist hybrid will work for audiences will become clear with the movie’s May release date.