Zombies Meet Ocean’s 11 in First Teaser for Zack Snyder’s Undead Heist Army of the Dead

Zack Snyder is just about ready to reveal his first feature film completed as director since leaving the set of Justice League during filming, and no, we’re not counting the Snyder Cut of the same film, which hits HBO Max in March. Rather, his newest effort is Netflix zombie action epic Army of the Dead, a project that Snyder has been steadily working on since the mid-2010s at this point. Stuck in development hell during various periods, the latest iteration of Army of the Dead is complete and shambling to the small screen for a May 21, 2021 release. And today, we have our first look at some footage, in the form of a teaser trailer.

The plot of Army of the Dead involves a team of mercenaries conducting what amounts to an undead heist, blasting their way into a heavily infected Las Vegas in an effort to claim the prodigious cash reserves just sitting around at select casinos. It begs the question, of course, why cash would be particularly useful during a zombie apocalypse at all—perhaps we can assume that the rest of the country is still somehow functioning normally, despite Vegas being filled with thousands or millions of zombies. Oddly, this would make the plot almost a perfect mirror of 2020’s disappointing Train to Busan sequel Peninsula, which also saw a team going into a zombie-populated area to bring back a truck full of cash.

Regardless, the quick look at Army of the Dead we get in the below teaser seems to promise bonkers, over-the-top action, akin to how Michael Bay might have approached the same screenplay. It certainly looks much sillier and less serious than the vicious Dawn of the Dead remake that first brought Snyder to the attention of film geeks back in 2004. Army of the Dead stars a large ensemble cast, anchored by Dave Bautista, Tig Notaro, Ella Purnell, Ana de la Reguera, Theo Rossi, Huma Qureshi, Garret Dillahunt, Omari Hardwick and more. Check out the teaser below.