Paramount Lines Up 'World War Z' Release Date with Mayan Calendar: December 21, 2012

2012-poster.jpg" style="width: 300px; height: 240px; margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px; margin-top: 5px; margin-bottom: 5px; float: left; " />Studios have been snatching up release dates lately in order to get a prime spot, but Paramount has decided to get clever with one of their biggest flicks.

"World War Z" is Paramount's zombie apocalypse movie based on a book of the same name, and stars Brad Pitt and "The Killing" star Mireille Enos. It sounds like it's going to be absolutely epic, like a movie version of "The Walking Dead" in which it's not about preventing the outbreak, it's about suriving it.

Here's where things get clever: Paramount has nabbed December 21st, 2012 as the release date for the movie. Does that date sound familiar? It should, because it has been in the news, on and off, for the past couple of years as being the day that the world will end as predicted by the Mayan calendar. You remember that big-budget actioner that came out a while ago named "2012?" Yeah, same deal.

Of course, opening a few days before Christmas isn't a bad time to open, either, and the date gives Paramount a good, long time to prepare this undoubtedly complicated and effects-heavy movie. As long as the world doesn't actually end, it should turn out to be a good move.

The only real forseeable problem (unless you consider the "Mayan prophecy" to be "real") is that "World War Z" will be opening on the same weekend as "The Lone Ranger," starring Johnny Depp. The box office battle over that face-off could actually end the world...expect to be buried under piles of billboards or slowly driven to insanity by competing TV ads.