ZOMBIELAND Sequel Becomes Half-Hour Television Comedy Series

If you hadn't guessed yet, zombies are bigger business than ever. Just hours after it was announced that Sunday night's epic Season 2 premiere of AMC's The Walking Dead drew in record 7.3 million viewing numbers, 20th Century Fox and Sony Pictures Television announce that they are developing a half-hour comedy television series based on the 2009 movie Zombieland. Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, the writing duo who ironically originally wrote Zombieland as a t.v. pilot before it eventually became a feature film that grossed $76.5 million, have now gone full circle and are back to writing their concept for television. Gavin Palone will produce the show that is aiming for the 2012-13 broadcast season (i.e. airing in a year's time) and he has told Vulture that the t.v. show will replace any big screen follow-up. Now finally the 'Zombie kills of the week' will actually make sense... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s01i5a1JHTI Why has this happened? I imagine it's two fold. 1) The Walking Dead is showing that a lengthy t.v. show about zombies can have longevity and keep an audience (even gain an audience) on television and it's not just a fad. 2) Stars Jessie Eisenberg and Emma Stone have become such in-demand actors since the original film with their follow-up hits The Social Network and Easy A/The Help that they could never fit it into their schedules and director Ruben Fleischer is now helming Gangster Squad at Warner Bros and has moved on to bigger things. Woody Harrelson and Abigail Breslin were the other two stars of the original and they are constantly working too. I wouldn't necessarily expect any of those stars to do the show (though I wouldn't rule out cameo's... but the film will likely have no relation to the t.v. show) but it would be cool to see Woody Harrelson on t.v. every week again. So Zombieland is coming to t.v. land but personally am a little concerned about a half-hour comedy (which I guess would accurately be called a sitcom, with the situation being an end of the world apocalypse with the Walking Dead) and how it might just be a tough thing to pull off every week. But Reese and Wernick are good writers and the best news is that they are working on this thing and that gives us a hope.