Gunpowder & Sky, DIGA Studios, and Full Fathom Five are teaming up to bring author Jeff Hart's teen zombie story EAT, BRAINS, LOVE to the screen, and they have found their ideal director in someone who has experience directing zombie teenagers – Rodman Flender, who brought us the EVIL DEAD II-inspired high school horror film IDLE HANDS back in 1999.
Flender will be directing the film from a screenplay written by Mike Herro and David Strauss, a duo best known for their work on the CW drama One Tree Hill.
Hart's novel EAT, BRAINS, LOVE, the first in a two-part series (the sequel is called UNDEAD WITH BENEFITS), centered on
high schoolers Jake and his crush, Amanda, who have contracted a mysterious zombie virus and devoured the brains of half their senior class. Now the two are on the run from Cass, a teen psychic sent by the government’s top-secret Necrotic Control Division to track them down. As Jake and Amanda deal with the existential guilt of eating their best friends and set off in search of a cure for the zombie virus, Cass struggles with a growing psychic dilemma of her own – one that will lead all three of them on an epic journey across the country and make them question what it means to truly be alive… or undead.
That story does sound like a good match for the director of IDLE HANDS. Flender's other genre credits include 1991's THE UNBORN, LEPRECHAUN 2 (my favorite of the LEPRECHAUN movies), and episodes of both Tales from the Crypt and Scream: The TV Series.
If you'd like to catch up on Hart's novel before the film is made, copies of EAT, BRAINS, LOVE can be purchased on Amazon.