Marc Forster has signed up to direct an adaptation of World War Z, a bestselling novel about flesh-eating zombies who destroy the word

After his gruelling sojourn into big-budget action with Quantum of Solace, Marc Forster said he wanted to return to the "smaller films" that made his name. One suspects a movie about flesh-eating zombies taking over the planet wasn't quite what he had in mind, but that's the film he will work on next, according to Variety.

World War Z is an adaptation of the eponymous bestselling novel by Max Brooks, son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft. It describes a devastating infestation of flesh-eating zombies that destroys all the nations of the world. The story is told through the first-person accounts of survivors, as relayed to a UN postwar commission 10 years after armageddon.

"The genre always fascinated me, and when they pitched it to me, it reminded me of the paranoid conspiracy films of the 70s like All the President's Men," Forster told Daily Variety.

World War Z is being developed by Brad Pitt's Plan B; Michael Straczynski, who wrote Changeling, is on board to write the screenplay. Pitt bought the rights in 2006 but will not necessarily take a starring role. Plan B has several other high-profile films in the works, including an adaptation of the novel Eat, Pray, Love starring Julia Roberts, and two David Fincher movies. Pitt recently finished work on Fincher's forthcoming The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.