Awful, worst adaptation ever

Rating: 1/10 (23 October 2013)

I was excited about this one, truly excited. The greatest zombie story ever written coming to the big screen? The sheer scale of it, Max Brook's globe trotting masterpiece, written in the best traditions of the genre, equal parts good old fashioned gore fest and social commentary of it's age.
Then there were the set pieces, Yonkers, Hope, the great battles never before envisaged in a zombie movie, and I read with glee, this movie was going to have the budget to meet expectations.
Then it was announced Brad was going to star, that was the first warning sign. Could such an A-List star take the back seat? The book had no central protagonist... OK maybe they would keep the overall theme but give Gerry Lane a role in a few of the chapters as well as the interviewer role. Then came rumours of delays, in fighting and walk outs.
By the time the movie was released the press was so bad I could almost not bring myself to watch it. But I had too, I had to see it. So I went to the theater to find... NONE of it, he took nothing other than the name of the movie and a couple of the characters? Why? Why Brad? Why?
Why did you buy up the rights to this, preventing others from using the source material to produce this generic focus-group scripted garbage? If you liked it so little that you changed everything about it, why buy the rights? Rumour had it that Di Caprio had been outbid on the rights.
I don't know if our merry strolling friend Leo would have done a better job - but he couldn't have done worse.
Also - that ending? You frikkin' what?