Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead Replaces Chris D’Elia with Tig Notaro

Director Zack Snyder is replacing actor Chris D’Elia with Tig Notaro (Star Trek: Discovery) for his new zombie movie, Army of the Dead, according to Deadline.

Reshoots are planned to incorporate Notaro into the movie since Army of the Dead has already completed shooting and is currently in post-production for a 2021 debut on Netflix. The move comes after D’Elia was accused this past June of multiple instances of sexual misconduct involving underage girls.

The comedian and actor has denied the claims, saying, “I know I have said and done things that might have offended people during my career, but I have never knowingly pursued any underage women at any point.” The accusations were enough, however, for Netflix to cancel an unscripted prank show the service was developing with D’Elia, who was also dropped by his management and agent.

Snyder plans to reshoot D’Elia’s scenes with Notaro and another actor performing in front of green screens. It is not clear when the reshoots will commence, but they will take place as soon as production is allowed to resume in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

The cast of Army of the Dead also includes Dave Bautista (Guardians of the Galaxy), Ella Purnell (Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children), Ana De La Reguera (Goliath), Theo Rossi (Luke Cage), Huma Omari Hardwick (Power), Garret Dillahunt (Fear the Walking Dead), Nora Arnezeder (Mozart in the Jungle), and others.

Army of the Dead brings Snyder full circle in a way, as his feature debut and breakout film was a 2004 remake of George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. The new film was initially conceived by Snyder and co-writer Joby Harold over a decade ago as a sequel to Dawn, but sat on the shelf at Warner Bros. until Netflix dusted it off and picked up the property.

Army of the Dead is now a standalone film in which Bautista stars as a father who hires a band of mercenaries to accompany him into a quarantined Las Vegas, where he hopes to find his daughter amid a plague of the reanimated dead. Snyder has said it will be the most “balls-to-the-wall zombie freakshow that anyone has ever seen.”

The director has spent most of the last decade and a half toiling in the DC film universe, developing and directing Watchmen (2009), Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and Justice League. The one original film he wrote and directed during that time, 2011’s Sucker Punch, was not well received by critics or audiences.

Snyder is also currently involved in readying his cut of Justice League for a premiere on HBO Max next year, news of which is likely to surface this coming weekend at the online DC FanDome event.