Huge opening for zombie film partly set in Israel

World War Z, the zombie epic starring Brad Pitt in which Israel features prominently, enjoyed a huge opening weekend, pulling in $66 million in the United States.

Many thought the film, which opened Friday, would flop spectacularly. News of skyrocketing budgets, unmet deadlines and reshoots dampened expectations, but audiences flocked to theaters to see Pitt battle zombies in Israel, North Korea, and Wales.

Pitt stars in — and produced — the apocalyptic thriller based on the book by Max Brooks, son of the legendary comic actor and director Mel Brooks. Pitt’s character reaches Jerusalem in his quest to save the world from a zombie epidemic.

Playing a former United Nations investigator, Pitt searches for the source of the worldwide plague that turns people into zombies that can scale walls and overtake cities in minutes. Soldiers shoot down some of the zombies, but it’s a losing battle.

As countries fall quickly to the flesh-eating zombies, Pitt heads for Israel, the last civilization standing. Israel picked up on the emerging zombie plague early after intercepting a message from India about battling the undead.

Pitt gets an audience with the Mossad chief (played by Ludi Boeken), who explains that Israel sprang into action when it first caught wind of the potential zombie threat. It built enormous walls in a matter of days, adding to Jerusalem’s existing historical defenses.

Boeken explains how the Jewish people were slow to respond in Europe during the 1930s, equivocated during the escalation of Arab armaments in 1973, and paid for it both times. Now, a system exists where 10 high-ranking individuals are pooled to take every threat seriously. If nine agree to dismiss it, it is the duty of the 10th person to investigate further, even if it seems foolish. Boeken’s character was prompted to take a stray message from India about “the undead” seriously, and this effort granted Israel the time to act.

Boeken takes Pitt on a tour, where we see, in sweeping wide-angle shots, the effectiveness of the Israeli military. Jerusalem is the only safe zone in the world and they are feverishly processing and accepting as many survivors of the zombie plague as they can. “Each person we save is one less we have to fight.”

However (spoiler alert!), when the diverse crowd of civilians — Arabs and Jews — begins to sing, the zombies, attracted to sound, make an unhuman pyramid and clamber over the wall, causing Jerusalem to fall.

Pitt escapes with Israeli actress Danielle Kertesz, who plays his tough female IDF bodyguard. Kertesz, 24, was plucked from the relative obscurity of parts in Israeli TV shows (“Loving Anna,” “Screens”) for the role in the blockbuster film.

Kertesz said she relished the filming, which took place in Malta, and said the sets, which featured the Old City and various West Bank checkpoints, among other locations, were utterly authentic — “and I grew up in Jerusalem.” She said some of the Hebrew phrases on the signposting were a little too literal, though, betraying the use of Google Translate.

World War Z is projected to give Pitt his biggest opening weekend ever, easily beating out the $50-million mark set by his 2005 spy film, Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

Jordan Hoffman and AP contributed to this report.