Channing Tatum and Reid Carolin's production company Free Association is joining forces with China-based Tencent Pictures to produce a film adaptation of the Chinese comic book ZOMBIE BROTHER (a.k.a. SHI XIONG), which has already served as the basis of a stage play, a mobile game, and an animated series in China.
Matt Lieberman will be writing the screenplay for the film, which is set to be directed by David Sandberg – not to be confused with LIGHTS OUT director David F. Sandberg. This Sandberg directed the '80s throwback short film KUNG FURY, which packed time travel, robots, Nazis, dinosaurs, and David Hasselhoff into its 31 minutes.
Lieberman is no stranger to working on properties that have a history of being animated, as he's also currently working on three different projects based on Hanna-Barbera cartoons: THE JETSONS, THE FLINTSTONES, and SCOOBY-DOO.
ZOMBIE BROTHER centers on
XiaoFei, an ordinary guy from H City. After the spring water is contaminated with a virus, the people living in H City become zombies one by one, devouring each other and gradually evolving. Can XiaoFei escape from H City and meet up with his girlfriend Wei?
That sounds like pretty standard stuff, but Sandberg being hired to direct the film and the fact that the anime series has been described as being hilarious leads me to believe that this won't be just another straightforward, serious "escape the zombie apocalypse" film. I'm expecting something crazy and comedic, but we'll have to wait and see how it all turns out.