WHEN ZACK SNYDER first pitched Army Of The Dead to Netflix, he didn’t just pitch one movie. He didn’t just pitch a franchise. He pitched a cinematic universe, with sequels and animated spin-offs and prequels galore, filling in the blanks of his zombie apocalypse. Of course, for every Marvel Cinematic Universe, there’s a Dark Universe, the Universal attempt to revive their iconic monsters which was staked through the heart before it could even get off the slab.
But nobody expected Army Of Thieves, an origin story about Army Of The Dead’s German safecracker, Ludwig Dieter. It’s December 2020 when Empire is magically transported to Prague (via a mobile phone being carted around by producer Misha Bukowski), a full five months before Army Of The Dead will even hit Netflix, and such is Netflix’s confidence in the property that they greenlit a spin-off centred around a character that audiences had not even seen. And, just to double down on the boldness of this move, Matthias Schweighöfer, the actor who plays Dieter, isn’t just on set today to deliver lines and hit his marks: he’s directing the thing.
“It was such a fantastic surprise,” says Schweighöfer, who has directed a number of German movies, such as What A Man and The Manny. “I was super, super honoured. To have my own prequel for that character was really surprising. And then here we are, shooting day 41.”