After years of lingering in development hell with names like David O. Russell and Natalie Portman attached and then gone, the film version of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES finally began production in London last month under the direction of Burr Steers (IGBY GOES DOWN) and we now have our first look at the period horror film. The adaptation of Jane Austen‘s novel was rewritten by ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER author Seth Grahame-Smith and kicked off an entire sub-genre of classics updated with genre tropes.
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES stars Lily James, Sam Riley, Matt Smith, Lena Headey, Jack Huston, Charles Dance, and many others in what will absolutely be one of the most unique films of next year. The film doesn’t just insert a zombie plague that has been ravaging the English countryside for seventy years but also makes the Bennett sisters skilled martial artists. While Steers strove for a realistic bend to the story, he already saw connections to the source novel.
“Even in the original story, Elizabeth’s a fighter and beyond her contemporaries in her ambitions and her ideas of women,” she says. “She’s a badass warrior. She’s a ninja.”
As a fan of the trilogy of novels and several similar spin-off titles, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES represents a fun twist on the zombie tale that has begun to run it’s course. It is hard to explain until you read the novel, but if Steers and his team can translate what worked so well on the page, the movie is going to be a hell of a lot of fun.
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES hits theaters in 2015. Check out the trailer for the novel below for an idea of the tone of the story.