Movies
‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’ Resurrected
Panorama Media, the company that sold international rights to Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty out of Cannes last year, has boarded a big-screen adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith’s best-seller Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, writes The Hollywood Reporter.
Panorama will produce and finance the mash-up film, and the company’s international sales unit, headed by Kimberly Fox, will introduce the title at Cannes. Darko Entertainment, Natalie Portman’s Handsomecharlie Films and producer Allison Shearmur are already onboard the project, which was originally set up at Lionsgate.
David O. Russell penned the latest screenplay. The project mixes Jane Austen’s 1813 classic novel “Pride and Prejudice,” centering on Elizabeth Bennet’s quest for love and independence amid the outbreak of a virus that turns the dead into zombies. The story’s set in an alternate version of 19th Century England that features deadly ancestors roaming the countryside.
Darko’s Sean McKittrick is also producing alongside Annette Savitch. The film will be executive produced by Darko’s Edward H. Hamm Jr., Aleen Keshishian and Panorama’s Marc Butan.
Published by Quirk Books, “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” has sold more than 1.5 million copies in the United States and has been translated into more than two dozen languages.
Zach Cregger is no stranger to violent movies, with his first two at-bats in the horror genre yielding the films Barbarian and Weapons. But even those movies can’t compete with the level of violence on display in his next movie Resident Evil, he teases in a new chat.
Zach Cregger tells Empire Magazine that Resident Evil is “definitely the most violent thing I’ve done.” He teases, “You gotta go grotesque! I wanted to go all the way.”
“So it’s gnarly. It’s brutal,” Cregger continues. “A very bloody affair.”
He also tells Empire, “Fleshing out what [the Umbrella Corporation is] up to and how the T-virus works, that’s not what this movie is. This movie is about one dude’s journey on foot, fighting monsters. I don’t give a fuck about checking boxes. All I cared about was just telling a fun story. We step on the gas at about eight minutes in and never take our foot off the floor.”
Resident Evil opens in theaters and IMAX September 18 from Sony.
The film is being billed as “a thrilling — and terrifying — reinvention of the Resident Evil franchise” from the mind of visionary filmmaker Zach Cregger (Barbarian, Weapons).
Austin Abrams (Weapons) stars as Bryan, a medical courier who unwittingly finds himself in a non-stop race for survival as one fateful, horrifying night collapses around him in chaos.
Zach Cherry (“Severance”), Kali Reis (“True Detective: Night Country”), Paul Walter Hauser (“Black Bird”), and Johnno Wilson (“Twisted Metal”) round out the cast.
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