21 Behind-The-Scenes Facts About Zack Snyder's "Army Of The Dead" That Are Just Super Cool

Tig Notaro filmed most of her scenes completely alone and months after filming ended.

1. First, Tig Notaro was digitally added to Army of the Dead months after filming wrapped — in fact, Netflix spent "a few million" dollars to do this.

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Chris D'Elia originally played Peters, but after several sexual misconduct allegations, the Army of the Dead team made the decision to cut D'Elia out of the movie. The millions of dollars spent by Netflix went toward digitally erasing D'Elia from all the footage, reshoots with Tig, and visual effects.

2. Also, because Tig was added so much later, she filmed all of her scenes completely alone. Zack Snyder and the digital effects team replicated the camera angles and "physical spaces" from the original scenes in a studio.

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Due to the coronavirus pandemic and shooting after everyone else, Tig still hasn't met Dave Bautista, even though they share a majority of their scenes together. The only time Tig filmed with another actor was when Ana de la Reguera came to set for a "half day" to shoot one scene.

3. Zack Snyder explained that some of the "trickiest shots" to film were actually when Tig's character is walking with the others, and it involved a lot of post-production work because she wasn't actually with them.

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When Tig had to physically touch another character, the moment was pantomimed or Tig's assistant was there wearing a green suit. Zack also had to tell Tig how fast or slow she should be walking, so her steps would match the pace of the other characters. In fact, sometimes Tig had to do the scene over and simply move a "centimeter."

4. Alongside being a producer, director, director of photography, and writer, Zack Snyder is also credited as the "camera operator B camera" on Army of the Dead, which is something he "hasn't done professionally since his days as a commercial director."

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In the book Army of the Dead: A Film by Zack Snyder — The Making of the Film, Zack says, "I was a director/cameraman in the commercial world for 12 years. The majority of the spots I shot myself." Only recently did Zack get back into camera work, when he shot a short film on an iPhone a few years ago.

5. Also, this movie marks the first time a Zack Snyder project was shot using digital cameras, which were actually outfitted with "50-year-old lenses."

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Up until Army of the Dead, Zack always shot on film. Army of the Dead: A Film by Zack Snyder — The Making of the Film explains that Zack was gifted a Monstro digital camera to play with, and Zack shot "all sorts of random stuff around the house" so he could get to know the camera "inside and out" before filming this movie.

6. The opening title sequence was designed "really carefully" by Zack Snyder because he wanted it to feel almost like a mini film before the actual movie begins.

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He explained, "The title sequence was one of those things that I designed really carefully. I wanted it to be stylized and fun." The title sequence also allowed Zack to showcase that our characters were veterans but they've been forgotten about.

7. Originally, Zack wrote the part of Vanderohe for Dave Bautista, but he ultimately realized Dave was perfect for Scott.

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In Army of the Dead: A Film by Zack Snyder — The Making of the Film, Dave explains, "As they came close to casting, [Snyder] said, 'Dave's not Vanderohe. Dave's Scott,' and he called me and asked if I'd do the part."

8. Also, Dave almost turned down Army of the Dead because he wanted to "prove himself" as an actor and try something other than an action movie.

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Eventually, the opportunity came up again and Dave finally read the Army of the Dead script and realized that Scott wasn't your "predictable action hero. He has some depth to him, some heart, and some emotion." Dave also loved the "redemption" story between Scott and his daughter.

9. To prepare for the Army of the Dead action sequences, the core cast went through "intensive training on unit tactics, led by retired US Navy SEALs."

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In Army of the Dead: A Film by Zack Snyder — The Making of the Film, Dave Bautista said, "The cool thing is, since we all trained together, we're all kinda on the same page and we're all thinking the same thing. We're working as a team."

10. All of the actors who played the Alphas, aka the evolved and fast zombies, had to go through movement training in order to get the "Alpha zigzag" down.

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Stunt coordinator Wayne Dalglish explained in the "making of" book that, "We had a couple of movement specialists on our core stunt team, and once we developed the movement, we taught all the stunt people. There were even extras that came in, and we had to put them through some workshops as well, so everybody moved the same."

11. Richard Cetrone, who played Zeus, wore "24 silicone prosthetics," and it took around three hours to get him into costume when they first started filming. The process then got down to under two hours by the end.

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Special makeup effects designer Justin Raleigh revealed in the "making of" book that Richard's costume consisted of prosthetics all over his back, arms, neck, and head, with "six different facial appliances," a full wig, contact lenses, and teeth. 

12. Meanwhile, Athena Perample, who plays Queen, had to wear "22 prosthetic pieces from the waist up," and it took close to four hours to get her into costume every day.

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In the "making of" book, Zack Snyder talked about casting Athena, saying, "When you look at her physicality and acting ability, very few actors could have done all of the things that Athena could."

13. It took a little over six hours for 35 makeup artists to get 150 Alphas into all of their prosthetics and makeup every single day.

Clay Enos / Titan Books / Netflix

In the documentary Creating an Army of the Dead, special makeup effects designer Justin Raleigh said they went through "a lot of different variations and design" before they landed on what the Alphas would look like. They would design the looks in Photoshop and sculpt models before actually making the final prosthetic pieces.

14. In order to make the sets look as real as possible, there was a 3D capture company in Las Vegas who were scanning the streets so everything would match up.

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The team explained in the documentary that over "12 days," the team used photography and drones to capture the entire Las Vegas Strip, which created a 3D model that the film could use.

15. The team's zombie-killing taco truck was one of the coolest pieces in the film to design, according to production designer Julie Berghoff. In fact, if you look closely, you can see that the team keeps a running tally of their zombie kills.

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In Army of the Dead: A Film by Zack Snyder — The Making of the Film, Julie explained, "We took break trucks, we broke out the glass, and put wire over the front to prevent [zombies] from being able to crawl in. It was like my Mad Max car."

16. Costume details were incredibly important and helped showcase a lot about the characters. For example, Cruz's key necklace opens a locker at her body shop, while Kate wears bracelets that kids in the camp made for her.

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Costume designer Stephanie Portnoy Porter was able to express what was important to the characters through their clothes. In the "making of" book, Zack Snyder explained, "They all asked the question 'What am I?' when they got inside the wall themselves. Stephanie was able to really express those elements of their personalities through the costumes at every turn."

17. Also, the costume team "thrifted, fitted, aged, destroyed, and zombie-fied" around 40,000 pieces of clothing.

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In Creating an Army of the Dead, costume designer Stephanie Portnoy Porter explained that for the zombies there had to be "something in their costume that reflects back to the essence of their character."

18. Samantha Win, who plays Chambers, is also a stunt double in real life. Notably, she was Ming-Na Wen's stunt double on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Clay Enos / Titan Books / Netflix

Zack and Deborah Snyder worked with Samantha on Sucker Punch, when she was Jena Malone's stunt double. In Army of the Dead: A Film by Zack Snyder — The Making of the Film, Samantha talked about doing her own stunts, saying, "It's like a brain puzzle when you're trying to memorize half beats, and you have your knife in a zombie while you're still shooting other zombies. I like the chaotic nature of it."

19. For the zombie horse in Army of the Dead, there was an actual horse underneath all of the zombie prosthetics.

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The team explained in the "making of" documentary that it took awhile to get the horse's costume just right and to make sure the horse was comfortable and not getting too hot inside the costume while filming.

20. Meanwhile, the zombie tiger was created digitally, so on set the cast was acting alongside a stunt coordinator who was "hopping around holding a stick" with a puppet attached.

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Omari Hardwick said, "That was the zombie tiger and Zack [Snyder] would say, 'Follow that. That's a zombie tiger. Ooh.' And so we weren't able to be as afraid obviously as we would be had there actually been Siegfried and Roy's tiger there zombified out."

21. And finally, Netflix has already greenlit two Army of the Dead prequels — one will be a movie and the other is an anime series.

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The prequel film will follow Ludwig Dieter, while the anime series titled Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas will "trace the origin story of Scott and his rescue crew during the initial fall of Las Vegas as they confront the source of the zombie outbreak," according to IndieWire. 

You can buy Army of the Dead: A Film by Zack Snyder — The Making of the Film now. And you can watch Creating an Army of the Dead on Netflix.