A Guide To Army Of The Dead‘s Zombie Heist Crew — & Its Last Minute Swap

What happens if Ocean's 11 included a zombie outbreak? That’s admittedly the over-simplified gist of Netflix’s latest movie Army of the Dead, from Zack Snyder. A group is assembled to head into Las Vegas to break into a casino and steal a bunch of money, and oh by the way, the city has been overrun by zombies and the team is up against a ticking clock: the government has decided to bomb Las Vegas in hopes of containing the zombies and getting rid of them once and for all. 

So in the group goes, lead by Dave Bautista’s Scott Ward who is far too familiar with zombies: he was in Las Vegas before and had to kill his wife after she became a zombie. He’s also not the only one who’s dealt with the undead. His assembled team is absolutely massive and includes all the usual heist suspects, from a safecracker, to a sharp shooter, a mechanic, and a pilot to get the team out safely after they’ve retrieved the money. 

But before it all came together, the casting of Army of the Dead was under a little heat in the real world. When the movie was originally filmed (pre-pandemic), Chris D’Elia played the part of Peters, the helicopter pilot. However, following his sexual misconduct allegations, he was scrubbed from the film and digitally replaced with Tig Notaro. These reshoots took place during the pandemic, and Notaro was filmed against a green screen and inserted into the movie without ever actually filming with the rest of the cast. Considering Snyder’s style of close-ups and often blurry background shots, Notaro’s new Peters seamlessly fits right in with everyone else. 

As for the rest of the cast, actors from all over the world, and from the worlds of film and television converge to fight zombies in Army of the Dead.