Zack Snyder reveals that Area 51 has something to do with the origins of Army of the Dead’s zombies. In 2004, Snyder made an early career splash with his remake of George Romero’s horror classic Dawn of the Dead. Now seventeen years later the director returns to the realm of the undead for a new and action-packed take on the zombie genre.
But Army of the Dead is obviously far from being the usual zombie fare. Indeed, the movie is something of a genre mash-up as it details a group of mercenaries executing a daring Las Vegas heist in the middle of a zombie outbreak. Dave Bautista plays the leader of the mercenaries, who encounter an array of threats as they pull off their improbable heist, including intelligent evolved zombies, old-fashioned shambling zombies and at one point even a zombie tiger. As Snyder himself recently discussed, this particular zombie outbreak does not however affect birds.
During an appearance over the weekend at the virtual Justice Con convention, the talkative Snyder dropped yet another interesting little detail about Army of the Dead’s zombies and where they actually come from. As it turns out, Area 51 is involved in these zombies’ origin story, though Snyder would not go into specifics, preferring to leave at least a little mystery remaining. He said:
It’s exciting. And look, frankly it goes back to what I was saying about Netflix being so...they love the movie, they love the universe. Just the kind of, this world that we’ve created and these zombies and their mythology and like where they come from, which is a mindbender anyway when you actually see it. I mean it’s not in the movie a hundred percent. It’s implied in the movie. But in the animated series we actually go and we go all the way. I don’t think it ruins anything to say Area 51 is involved. Of course it is. When you say it out loud, you’re like I guess zombies do come from Area 51. Wouldn’t that make sense. It’s right there. Why would they put Las Vegas so close to Area 51? That feels like a mistake.
As Snyder indicates in his comments the origin story of Army of the Dead’s zombies won’t be fully covered in the movie, but will be gone into in more detail in its accompanying animated prequel series Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas. Incidentally, there will also be a live-action prequel movie called Army of Thieves that goes deeper into the mercenary character Ludwig Dieter (Matthias Schweighöfer). Clearly, Snyder has big plans for his Army of the Dead universe and isn’t wasting any time fleshing it out with help from Netflix's bottomless pockets.
The idea of Army of the Dead's zombies being created by something from Area 51 is of course a logical one given the proximity of that location to the movie’s setting in Las Vegas. The involvement of the secret facility famous from alien conspiracy theories certainly implies that the virus that created the zombies (that affects tigers but not birds) may be the result of government experiments (probably not involving aliens, but then again it's impossible to say). Of course, something must have gone horribly wrong with containment at Area 51 to allow the virus to get out, creating an army of zombies - both human and animal - that then overran the entire city, setting up Army of the Dead’s heisters vs. zombies plot.
Source: Justice Con/YouTube
