- Hi, my name is Matthias Schweighöfer,
and I'm the lead actor of this film,
"Army of Thieves,"
and the director of this film.
- I'm Zack Snyder.
I am the producer and I wrote the story for
"Army of Thieves."
(suspenseful music)
If you are watching "Army of the Dead,"
you'll notice that in the timeline
we're probably right alongside of "Army of Thieves."
(intense music)
(rewind)
Because what happens within the body of the film,
we see the fall of Vegas,
which, as you know, we see in the title sequence
of "Army of the Dead."
Just as Vegas is falling,
our team in Germany are cracking these safes.
- [Korina] We've assembled from various sources
the locations of the three safes.
- So there's this legendary Ring Cycle, you know,
and it's four safes made by Hans Wagner.
You know what this is like a family of safes
guiding us to, you know,
the lost dear friend,
somewhere in America.
- All the safes are owned by Bly Tanaka,
who is the guy who owns the Bly Casino
that they end up going to in Las Vegas.
- [Scott] How would you like to make 250-grand,
for one day's work?
- Oh, my god.
- We had written this whole concept for
Dieter to explain the Ring Cycle safes
in "Army of the Dead."
The scene as written is probably another, like,
three or four minutes longer--
just the speech.
- He named it the Götterdämmerung
for the final chapter in his namesake
Richard Wagner's epic opera.
- It was Matthias doing the scene
that made me go, like, "Oh, yeah."
Finding out why that character is
so obsessed with safes is a thing,
I think, that's fun.
And that's really how it started.
- He was talking about the potential idea of a spinoff
and about Dieter
and I was like,
"What? What did you just say?"
Then he offered me the film to be the director,
and I was like, (kissing)
"Thank you. I will do this.
Is that true?"
And he said,
- [Both] "Yes."
- "It's very true."
- You're in?
- We'll go through it together.
(upbeat music)
- Is it like in a movie film,
where each one of us has a different skill set,
and it's only working together
that we can pull off that which needs the pulling off?
- We do sort of investigate the tropes
and kind of play with the ideas
of, like, a heist film.
There's nothing tropier than the joining of the team
and a creation of the team.
And sort of the description of the skill sets
of the team members.
That's, like, one of the main linchpins of
making a heist film.
That was fun,
and then throwing Dieter,
this innocent Dieter,
into the mix with these kind of, like,
badass thieves was really--
that was really fun to talk about.
- Wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wait!
Wa, wa wait.
(squeals)
- To create a character (chuckles)
that has to be protected by a whole team,
and everyone in the team knows,
you know, "I don't know how the fuck we can do this."
To have a foundation for a character like this,
protect him because we need him.
- Behind me.
- Hold this please.
(punch thudding)
- It's a dream coming true for a character.
Boom.
- It's not a zombie movie, per se.
I mean, you might get a taste but,
you know.
- If you never heard about,
you know, like, "Army of Thieves"
or "Army of the Dead,"
you can be happy just, you know,
there is a prequel and a sequel
if you explore these films totally new.
- Unfortunately, you're just gonna have to endure
these incredible actors,
cracking safes and fighting their way through Europe
on this amazing adventure.
- My god,
there's a prequel.
Or, there is a sequel to the prequel,
and there will be more?
I'm going crazy!
- So...
Sorry about that.