Army of the Dead teaser: Snyder’s return to the genre is ‘love letter to everything zombies’

The first teaser for director Zack Snyder's upcoming zombie film, Army of the Dead, has been released. The film is intended to kickstart a new franchise for Netflix, which has already put a spinoff and an animated series into production.

Watch the teaser of "Army of the Dead" here 

The one-minute teaser shows off the film's large-scale action scenes, set in a post-apocalyptic Las Vegas, where hordes of the undead have taken over the human population. The film follows a group of men and women who come together to stage a heist at a casino. Dave Bautista leads the cast, which also features Huma Qureshi, although she isn't seen in the teaser.

"It is a full-blown, balls-to-the-wall zombie heist movie, so it's genre-on-genre in a great way," Snyder told Entertainment Weekly earlier this year. "So you expect pure zombie mayhem, and you get that, 100%. But also you get these really amazing characters on a fantastic journey. It's going to surprise people that there's a lot of warmth and real emotion with these great characters."

Netflix stepped up to produce the project after it sat stationary at Warner Bros for a decade. "[Warner Bros.] didn't want to spend that kind of money on a zombie movie," Snyder told EW, "or just didn't take it that seriously. I was always like, 'Look guys, this is more than [just a zombie movie],' but it fizzled out."

Slated for a May 21 release on Netflix, the film also stars Theo Rossi, Tig Notaro, Garret Dillahunt, Raúl Castillo, Omari Hardwick, Hiroyuki Sanada, Matthias Schweighöfer, Ella Purnell, and Ana de la Reguera.

But first, Snyder has his long-awaited cut of Justice League, which will be released on the HBO Max streaming service on March 18. The four-hour superhero epic will also be made available to audiences around the world, through yet-to-be announced channels.