[Script To Scream]: Patrick Swayze Used To Live In ‘Zombieland’ Plus We Talk With Screenwriter Rhett Reese!

Movies
Posted by EvanDickson on February 17, 2012 @ 8:21pm
Category: Movies / Exclusives

A film lives many lives before it ever hits the screen. A script is usually revised multiple times (sometimes dozens) before a single foot of film is exposed (or the digital equivalent thereof). I’m not just talking about smaller stuff like dialogue polishes and the addition or deletion of scenes. Many times the core story is reworked in profound ways. Sometimes it’s downright shocking how different the final film can be from the initial drafts.

In this new (semi-regular) feature for Bloody-Disgusting, I’m going to take a look at some early drafts of scripts for horror films that you may have already seen and discuss the differences, whether they took a turn for the worse, better or just different. There are also a handful of scripts for sequels and remakes that never happened that are worth checking out – just to see what might have been.

These aren’t script reviews, and only rarely will I be breaking the stories down on a beat-by-beat basis. I’m just going to point out some cool, interesting and/or disastrous choices that happened along the way. Each installment will be different, and each installment will be fun. I’ll also be including sample pages (when available)* so you don’t have to take my word for it!

*This applies only to older and previously released films that are already part of the culture. We’re not in the business of leaking or sabotaging projects in development.

My first installment was a look at Joe Dante’s Gremlins, written by Chris Columbus. Today I’m taking a crack at Ruben Fleischer’s Zombieland written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick.

Reese was also kind enough to talk with me a little bit about the differences between the draft we’re looking at today and the finished film as it appeared in 2009 – so you get to hear a lot of this straight from the horse’s mouth. In case you didn’t guess, almost every single word below the jump is a spoiler. READ MORE