When you’re invited to do what they call an “Edit Bay Visit,” you are generally shown a small handful of scenes, and given a brief look at what’s to come. Clearly, the studio and filmmaker are prepared to reveal something that they are proud of. Oftentimes, it raises your excitement level only to lead to the ultimate realization that the rest of the movie just wasn’t all that good. However, sometimes it's clear that what you are watching is far better than you could've hoped. And this is true for Sony Pictures upcoming horror/comedy sequel, ZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP. This time, there was much revealed even before we could ask a question. Ruben Fleischer was ready to tell us all about the sequel and his experience making it. As for the scene's we witnessed, I laughed often and out loud at the gleefully enjoyable feature. JoBlo – along with a small group of reporters – were invited to get an early glimpse at the new film. And boy were we shown a whole lot!
I genuinely like Ruben Fleischer. The filmmaker is incredibly grounded and always kind and sincere. And when he loves a movie, it’s kind of a beautiful thing. When we arrived at Sony Studios in Culver City, he welcomed us and simply began to explain why he did the continuation, and how important it was to get the script right. As well, there wouldn't be another ZOMBIELAND without the amazing talents of Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Abigail Breslin and Emma Stone. Yes, the band is back together with a couple of fun "surprise" cameos – this has been revealed in the trailer and will be discussed in the following conversation. As well, Zoey Deutch and Rosario Dawson help stir things up in wonderful ways.
Now is the time I generally discuss the scenes that were presented. I’m going to tread lightly because frankly, there are quite a few spoilers that were revealed to us and talked about. As mentioned, we saw much more of the film than you’d anticipate when doing an Edit Bay Visit. In all, I believe we took in around six scenes/sequences, and perhaps the most important reaction was just how freaking funny it all was. The re-introduciton to the gang – who have found a bit of a haven at the White House – was incredibly fun. Ms. Breslin appears to be quite terrific here, and this time, she finds herself wanting more than just hanging out with Tallahassee and Columbus. Things get especially troubling when she meets a young man who is a pacifist. Let’s just say Tallahassee isn’t a huge fan of this dude’s beliefs.
One of my favorite sequences we saw took place in a shopping mall, as well as another moment that took place at a little dive called The Hound Dog Hotel. While gathering supplies and living it up at the local shopping center, Tallahassee and Columbus discover a ditzy girl named Madison. Now I’ve been a fan of Zoey Deutch for a bit, but holy hell this puts her on another level. I’m convinced that she is going to steal every scene that she’s in. During the conversation, we talk about one particular moment where the actress has a bit of fun with a pair of binoculars. While I was already impressed with Zoey, I can’t wait to see her entire performance when I check out the completed film.
And speaking of The Hound Dog Hotel, this is where our team runs into the always lovely Rosario Dawson. Ms. Dawson plays Nevada, and she appears to be having a blast fighting off zombies, and perhaps flirting a bit with our guy Tallahassee. The chemistry that this cast shares is still present, and frankly, the world they are in looks to be about as much fun as you can have while watching the undead roam the Earth looking for fresh meat.
Read on and you’ll find a ton more details about the footage we were shown. However, be careful as we were witness to some major moments that happen in the upcoming sequel… THERE ARE A FEW SPOILERS. In fact, one section of the interview I’ll give you another quick spoiler warning. The final scene we were shown is from near the very end, and even without the completed VFX, it still looks ridiculously fun! So with that, I wanted to give a huge thank you to Sony Pictures, and of course, to Ruben himself for allowing us to get such a deep glimpse into this hilarious looking sequel. Frankly, I think he may have outdone himself with DOUBLE TAP! Make sure you look out for ZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP when it arrives in theatres on October 18th, 2019!
Journalists: We all respond saying not much.
RF: I’ll give you all a little context. So in 2009 the first ZOMBIELAND, my first movie, came out. Ten years have passed, both for ZOMBIELAND and the rest of the world. We thought about doing a sequel soon after the original, but it didn’t come together for whatever reason. So about five years ago, after GANGSTER SQUAD, I was kind of like, eh, that ZOMBIELAND was pretty awesome. It was such a fun experience and people really liked that movie and it would be great to get that cast back together and go on another adventure. So we started figuring out an idea for the movie. Rhett [Reese] and Paul [Wernick] who wrote the original were busy doing DEADPOOL, so they served as executive producers to help with the writer to come up with a story. Basically it took like four years of writing drafts and getting to a place where we all were confident in to go and make the movie.
The cast was all really excited about doing a sequel, but they wanted to make sure that if they were going to do it, then it would have to be at least as good as the original. Woody has told me multiple times that the movie he gets asked most about out of all his films is ZOMBIELAND. People come up to him and say, “Bill F*cking Murray!” or whatever it is. They were really excited about it. So they just wanted to make sure that if we were going to do another movie, it had to be really good. And the only way to make a good movie, and I agree, is if you have a good starting place. If the script is great then it makes everybody’s job easier. We were really demanding on the script to make sure it was great, and that it was a story worth telling.
Was there a definitive reason why you didn’t make it earlier?
RF: It was a combination of things. I think in part, I was a little like, no I want to stretch my legs and I don’t want to be the ZOMBIELAND guy. I want to go try other things and my next two films didn’t do nearly as well. So I quickly realized that that was pretty good, what I had. Also, the mistake we made with that sequel idea was that the bad guys were other people, and it just changed the tone of it in a weird way. I think this movie is like a comedy first. So having the zombies be the bad guys I think is how it should be. We didn’t realize that at the time, but it kind of just didn’t feel right. Like, I’m glad we didn’t make that version. I think there is a reason why, both myself and the cast and the studio were like, yeah, we’re going to put this to the side. And then, after the fact it was kind of cool, because I think it makes it more interesting that we kind of see what’s happened in the time that has passed.
The ten year time difference isn't a plot point per say, but you know, Abbie, who was twelve in the first one is now a woman. She’s a grown up. And that, as you’ll see in the scene [we show] is a big story point for her. She’s only lived with her small nuclear family and she wants to spread her wings and be like any teenager and leave the nest. She wants to go meet boys, or friends her own age and not just be stuck with her family. So she has natural growing pains. And then I think Wichita and Columbus, Jessie [Eisenberg] and Emma [Stone], are in a domestic situation and we established in the first movie that Wichita is kind of like a rolling stone a little bit. She’s not totally comfortable being by herself.
Maybe we should play that Christmas scene. This scene is like – I wasn’t going to play this, but it does a good job of kind of introducing where our characters are at and some of the things that they are feeling early on in the movie. So this is really early in the first act. You can see there are some growing pains within our little family. I also like this scene because it kind of shows this wish fulfillment of like, if you did live in the post-apocalypse, you could live anywhere like, in the opening of the movie they make the White House their home. So this scene is in the Oval Office and it’s kind of decorated with stuff that they pulled from the Smithsonian or wherever else, and they’ve kind of made it their own.
Okay, let’s go to the next scene, the mall scene. Basically, the girls soon after this split. They’re feeling a little claustrophobic so they take off in Tallahassee’s kind of pride and joy, something that we introduce in this movie called “The Beast.” Let’ go to the movie to the scene where he’s working on it. It’s Obama’s old Presidential limo which is like this incredible, bullet-proof, thing that the Secret Service dubbed “The Beast” because it weighs like eight tons and it’s just this indestructible machine. So he’s made that his own thing, so this is the Presidential limo and he’s custom made it his own kind of Mad Max zombie killing machine with a little tweaking on the front horn and it has bullhorns in a bulldozer thing on it. He put his signature “3” in honor of Dale Earnhardt on the side of it. So when the girl’s split, they take “The Beast” with them. And he’s really sad that they left, but he’s even more sad that they took “The Beast.” So let’s watch the mall scene, which takes place about a month or two after the girl’s had left.
That's kind of a lot of the exposition as far as like the plot, basically. This is still early in the movie, Wichita is back and Little Rock is gone. They gotta go get Little Rock. And so the movie becomes a kind of Columbus, Tallahassee, Madison and Wichita on a road trip to go get Little Rock back. Obviously there's a built in tension and triangle between Columbus, Madison, and Wichita given that Jesse's a, you know, kind of fostered a romantic situation with Madison. So we play that up. I think you'll see in the next scene coming up if you have any questions about that or anything as far as that scene?
I'll just say that, one thing I love is the whole wish fulfillment feel of it, that's like Tallahassee’s man-cave that they call the White House motor pool. So he kind of filled it with all of these things that he's scavenged from. Like whether it's the spacing from the [National] Air and Space Museum, or the video games, the Big Buck Hunters – the prop guys built some pretty incredible homemade weapons that he built. So just try to like imagine what if you had all the time in the world and nothing to do, what would you do? I'm trying to place those details throughout the film.
So anyway, they all hop in the car. Uh, actually why don’t we play that scene where they're walking out of the White House. We'll just watch this quickly. I'll probably just cut it once, once we get into it [more of the film], but just so you can kind of see. Um, here's a funny one about this car that they're in, so I can play from it maybe when they're walking out of the front of the White House, getting the minivan, they're going to go on their road trip together, let's pick up with that. As you saw in that one shot with the blue screen, like all that White House is all done in post, like we built like the stairs and the steps, but then all the rest of it is all just, [blue screen]. All right, so now they're on the road.
Zoey is pretty amazing. It's really, really funny. I hope you caught that. That was the Hope Diamond that she has on her finger that Columbus originally got for Wichita, and then she didn't want it. And then Madison finds it. Then, just a kind of like a little note about how we shoot stuff, like that scene on the overpass. So that whole bit about the, 'can I see,' and then the binoculars, all that was all just improvised on the day. And it was just something that Zoey just started doing that bit of “Can I see?”, “Can I see?” and it was just so funny. And then, he originally gave it to her the right way. He then figured out over the course of the text we just tried like, well, what if you give it to her the wrong way. And then she would take it and try different things. And then that's almost all one take where she just does that whole run, there's no cuts. It's just her being crazy and needed to just react to it in real, real time.
It’s just amazing when you have such talented actors that can just generate so much comedy just in the moment. And so it was really a joy every day just to shoot, cause we're always finding new new things and new ideas to elevate what was on the page – which was already a great starting point like we talked about. But when you have such talented comedians, they just bring so much to the table. A part of the job of the director is just giving them the space to do that and to be able to feel free to try things. And you know, on the first, second and third take, it might not land, but by the time it gets to the fifth, or with something like that, it gets a huge laugh in the theater. So that's great.
So now, they’ve gone to Graceland, which we’ve established as to where Little Rock is. When they get there, it's been burned to the ground. And so they're disheartened in part because Graceland is no longer – which was a dream of Tallahassee – but also clearly because Little Rock isn't anywhere to be found. So they're driving out of Memphis, they see this neon sign that says Hound Dog Hotel, which is a like a road side kind of tourist trap, Elvis fanatic place, uh, pre zombieland. So they kinda, they, they're kind of like, what’s up with that place? And then they noticed that “The Beast” is parked in front of it. They pull up to check it out. And this is, this [next scene] is them checking it out.
Can I ask is Bill Murray involved in this?
RF: I wish.
What was the biggest challenge for you this time after the massive success of the first one?
RF: I think the biggest challenge was self-imposed, like collectively just not wanting it to feel the pressure of having to make it as good as the first one. And trying really hard to, to always elevate it and make sure that if we were going to make a sequel, that it'd be at least as good, if not better than the original. And so, you know, most sequels aren't. And so it was really challenging to have a high bar like that, and not wanting to tarnish the first one in any way. So hopefully we succeeded.
Was it hard getting the band back together?
RF: I think once we had a script that everybody felt confident in, they all wanted to do it. They really did want to make the sequel, that was their motivation. They all made sacrifices to be a part of this film. So it was motivated purely out of a desire to work together again and kind of get the band back together, but also to make something that we could all be very proud of
How do you balance the horror and comedy elements?
RF: It's tricky, but the good thing is on the first movie we had the template, so in a sense it was the original writers, the original director of the original cast. Like we all knew what the target was. I think it was harder the first time to define the tone, but once we kind of know what it was, then we felt very comfortable actually going back to that same tone. For me it was always a comedy first and just letting the comedy and the characters be the focus and then the zombies and the action are kind of in the horror, you know, the icing on the cake. But the core of the movie is about the relationships and the characters. And when you have such great actors to work with, they make the characters so real and they have such amazing chemistry among them that it just makes it really fun to work with them.
After working with Tom Hardy [in VENOM], were you tempted to try and get him on board?
RF: Uh, no. This is self-contained world that it felt like, uh, these guys, uh, are in to do a different, different sort of universe I guess.
Speaking of cameos, are there any that we can expect? I had heard something about Dan Aykroyd.
RF: No, that was like an internet thing. I don’t know how that came to be. But, there’s the one that we tease in the in the trailer with Luke Wilson and Thomas Middleditch. They kind of play doppelgänger versions of Columbus and Tallahassee. And that's one of my favorite scenes in the movie. And it's like a really special [moment that] takes place at that Hound Dog Hotel. It's a really memorable, fun sequence. That kind of for me, was our Bill Murray kind of special thing. And I, I kind of, I mean I'm glad it's in the trailer cause it's really funny. But if it hadn't been, I believe it would've been one of those things like, oh, we gotta get this, there's this part in the movie that's really terrific when these people come. But we teased it a little bit so people know it's in there, but it goes in an unexpected direction and it's really, really fun.
In the ten years that have passed, have the zombies evolved in any way?
RF: Yeah. They have. Um, actually we can show you a little bit of a, this one piece that kind of talks about that. At the beginning of the movie, there's a prologue similar to the first movie where they're like, this is similar to how the Eskimos have different words for snow. We have developed different words for zombies. There's ones that are really dumb that we call the Homers. There's the ones that are really smart that we call the Hawkings, and then there's ones that are really sneaky that are called the Ninjas. So we've established at the beginning of the movie that there are these kind of taxonomy of different zombies. Then in the midst of the battle where they're going after the RV, they come across a new zombie that they haven't encountered before. And that's, I'll show you a little clip from that,
Yeah, there are different kinds of zombies that have evolved over the time. And this T-800 is the one that's going to be the real threat. So Little Rock and Berkeley, they go to this commune called Babylon, which is a place that Berkeley's been before where there's a bunch of young kind of millennial hippie types that have a commune where they all live together. And so naturally Little Rock wants to go there cause she's been yearning to be around people her own age. But they're there. It's a pacifist commune where they don’t have guns or anything like that. So they've walled it off and they're all hanging out at Babylon smoking weed, without a care in the world. Meanwhile this hoard of T-800s’ are making its way towards them. I'll just show you a quick little glimpse at the battle at the end, which is to say that the commune will be in peril. So our heroes are trying to save the hippies.
This was kind of fun just cause in the first movie everything was practical. But in this movie, just because we have this monster truck, we couldn’t have people around that. So we had to do a lot of the zombies’ digitally, but it allowed us to do a bigger scale kind of hoard, which was cool. Let me go ahead. Sorry. Here is our fighting [sequence]. The zombies are about to die and then who should show up? I should preface it by saying this, they're all these VFX shots are works in progress. None of those are final. So it's very rough still. But when it's all done, there are all the zombies, a little perfect act up and it was fun to get to have that kind of World War Z moment, just like masses of zombies. You can't put people around a truck like that. It was a real truck except for the flip part. But it kind of like allows for this big scale, third action set piece, which is really cool and it goes on and on and it's a really extended sequence. That's really cool. Yeah. There's just so much fun to get to go back to ZOMBIELAND and work with this cast again. And then just to get to expand the world a little bit.
END OF HEAVY SPOILERS!
And so obviously this isn’t your typical summer movie. Why do you think fans still love the zombie genre?
RF: I don't know. I couldn't tell you. I mean, for me the fun of it is more about the apocalypse than anything like this. Like I think we're all kind of living in fear of these days of lots of things. And so it's not hard to imagine the world coming to an end, unfortunately. So for me, the fun is in the post-apocalypse. Like that you can still have fun. And the zombies to me, I mean, I think originally people said like with DAWN OF THE DEAD and stuff, they were kind of like a representation of fear of nuclear proliferation or just general anxiety. In our world I think they're kind of just like an existential threat that is working against just, you know, our happiness or something.
You were mentioning about Abigail Breslin, and now she is older obviously. These 10 years must be a big change for everybody, including you. How easy was it to find the chemistry again?
RF: That's a great question. It was actually a dream come true, despite Emma’s Oscar and Jesse's nomination. And Woody, I think has gotten two nominations since the first ZOMBIELAND? And Abigail's gone onto great things, as well as the writers who did DEADPOOL and DEADPOOL 2. And I've done some stuff. Like it was really like a family reunion. It was so much fun just being together. I think for Jessie and Emma especially, it was such a big deal because they were just doing smaller movies and the original film was their first kind of big commercial starring roles. For me, obviously it was a huge deal. And I've worked with them since. This is my third movie with Jesse, my third movie with Emma and my third movie with Woody.
And they've all worked together. Jesse and Woody did those NOW YOU SEE ME movies together and then Woody and Emma maintain a really close friendship. We’re all connected. And I think it was for us just a true joy to get to come back together and make this movie. We all made a lot of sacrifices to be able to make the movie cause it was just out of the love of a) just to have this great experience again, and b) just make something that we hope audiences will really love
in 10 years. A lot can change. How much did change from the story originally when you were thinking, oh yeah, let's do a sequel. How much did it change to this?
RF: Well, the very first version that was written is totally different. This is a separate movie but once we started talking about it, I think the core components to their original idea remained, where Little Rock was gone, and then they had to go get her. And then Madison has always been a character from the beginning. And I'm pretty sure Nevada was as well – Rosario’s character. Then you have tons of drafts, like multiple, multiple, multiple drafts with changes and different, you know, plot lines and switches. But it was only until the original writers came back and did a pass that it kind of felt like ZOMBIELAND properly.
RF: Yeah, I mean it's constant and it was a big part of the first. You know, there's some jokes that are some of my favorite jokes from the first movie that Jesse specially came up with. Like how he first meets Tallahassee, he says, “Oh, you almost knocked over your alcohol with your knife.” And then he takes his shot glass and pours it out the window. And like, there's all these little moments that he always embellished and made better. But in this, maybe… I'm a huge fan of it and we're lucky because the script was so good to begin with.
That was how it went, the one with binoculars. I was all in for advising. I mean, if you cast people that have that ability, it just brings more to it. If people are just saying the words, that's all you're ever going to get. But if you cast people that can elevate the material, find magic in the moments, then it just gives you so much more to play with. And as the director, I'm just greedy and so I want as much as I can to get what you saw. In anything I do, I like finding stuff that's outside of the script. I was lucky cause everybody just came guns blazing. And that's especially true with Thomas Middleditch and Jesse Eisenberg, they have a scene together that's incredible. And Tom, I don't know if you know Thomas, but he's on Silicon Valley and he's like this world class improviser. I mean, he and this guy named Ben Schwartz do these shows where they played Carnegie Hall and they show up no script. They just fill the entire show with improv. He’s, he's truly one of the greatest in the world.
Did you try contacting Bill Murray again for this?
RF: I haven't spoken to him since the first one. You know, he's notoriously impossible to get in touch with. And, uh, I don't have his contact info. So, yeah, I mean, it's a shame that we killed ‘em, you know, in the first one.
Did it ever cross your mind to contact like Brad Pitt in with the WORLD WAR Z inspiration?
RF: No. We kinda just kept just what was scripted and then, you know, with those cameos like Luke and Thomas, we just wanted people that kind of felt like a spiritual kinship with Tallahassee and Columbus. So that they, each kind of mirrors of them. So Thomas is a natural mirror to Jesse, and Luke has that real kind of, what do you call it?
[As a viewer, I'd call it a spark.]