"a long, long, redundant, redundant couple of years"
"I seriously doubt there's a film in it", says Drew McWeeny who has read the manuscript for the April released novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by author Seth Grahame-Smith and whose film rights became something of a major bidding war last month that has already caught the attention of Natalie Portman. If the concept of taking Austen's much lauded masterpiece and turning it into a zombified horror yarn wasn't enough, the behind-the-scenes development of the film was also of much interest, when only a week later a rival project (replacing zombies with aliens) was greenlit. That one titled Pride and Predator is being produced by Elton John, which just adds to the bizarreness of the situation. But McWeeny, having read and seemingly had fun with Seth Grahame Smith's novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies calling it a"breezy read", is not convinced that any of these Austen reworkings have a solid movie in them. In fact he believes the adaptation could be the sign of "a long, long, redundant, redundant couple of years" in the horror genre.
"I think these are all short film ideas at best. Because once that one joke wears off, what do you have? Unless the filmmakers involved were smart enough to stage genuinely fresh and novel zombie or monster sequences (and so few ever seem to be), you're left with already overly-familiar stories with overly-familiar horror elements grafted on".I'm not so sure I agree with McWeeney and I'll tell you why. Movies like Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and even The Pineapple Express have blended genres in a way that are smart, inventive and incredibly rewarding. Dropping Spacedinto a zombie film, or mixing The Wicker Man, Point Break and Lethal Weapon... was genius and worked brilliantly, why is this so different here? Even Seth Grahame Smith's idea isn't all that original and I'm sure I know his inspiration for it. In the 1940's, a Jacques Tourneur horror is generally regarded to be the first zombie movie. Titled I Walked With A Zombie, the movie took the basic structure of Jane Eyre and transformed it into a voodoo horror film, with the pre-Romero zombie formula. It remains one of the most atmospheric and original horror films of the first half of the last century. I'm not ready to rule this adaptation out yet.
