Interviews
[Interview] Ruben Fleischer & Jesse Eisenberg on the ‘Zombieland’ Sequel That Could Have Been
Ten years. That’s how long it’s been since Ruben Fleischer‘s Zombieland was released in theaters. And now, we are finally getting a sequel after a decade of waiting.
But plans for the film that would eventually become Zombieland: Double Tap (our review) began almost immediately after the first film opened to $24.7 million back in 2009. Screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick planned to have the sequel begin the day after the original film ended and see what the next day in Zombieland looked like for Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin).
Unfortunately, the duo got busy with other projects (those would be 2013’s Zombieland pilot for Amazon, the action sequel G.I. Joe: Retaliation and 2016’s Deadpool) and were unable to fully commit to a sequel. It soon seemed like Zombieland 2 would never happen. Alas, here we are in 2019 and Zombieland: Double Tap hits theaters this weekend.
Related Article: Jesse Eisenberg Recalls the Troubled Production of Wes Craven’s ‘Cursed’
We had the chance to speak with Eisenberg and director Ruben Fleischer about the film and its development process. Though there are plenty of reasons as to why the film took so long to get made, not much is being said about the plethora of drafts that were written over the last 10 years (because there were quite a few). In the Q&A following the press screening of the film, Fleischer mentioned that there were aspects of the rejected drafts that, by the time they got serious about making the film, just wouldn’t work. After all, a lot has changed in the last 10 years!
Regarding one of the rejected drafts, Fleischer said:
“The theme of [one] script was that zombies had kind of gotten boring and killing zombies had kind of gotten boring. It was meta in that way. It was a commentary on the fact that there’s just too much zombies. We’ve reached peak zombie and so I think the characters ennui was a little bit reflective of [the audience’s] as well. [Zombies] weren’t any kind of real threat and so Tallahassee lost his passion because he just didn’t have the challenge anymore. In the original draft Tallahassee was really excited when he came across [the T-800s], what were then called “Super Zombies”, because it was his reason for living was kind of his spark was lit again.”
The desire to feature zombie fatigue in the film was no doubt in response to the things like AMC’s The Walking Dead (which hadn’t even premiered when the first film was released), its spinoff Fear the Walking Dead and, well, the original Zombieland. It’s no secret that the creatures have been a bit overplayed over the last decade, but while making fun of that fatigue might have made sense in 2013, it would feel old hat in 2019.
This isn’t to say that the rejected drafts were terrible. On the contrary, most of them contained elements that made their way into the sequel. There were even elements from the earlier drafts that Fleischer liked that didn’t make their way into the final product, but rather evolved into different things that wound up working out better than he could have anticipated.
For example, the doppelgängers for Tallahassee and Columbus (played by Luke Wilson and Thomas Middleditch, respectively) are featured prominently in the sequel’s marketing, but the Columbus doppelgänger wasn’t in the original script. Fleischer told us:
“I can say honestly that every draft I put forward to the cast I felt could have been an awesome version of the movie. There was a version at one point with the doppelgängers where it was originally just one of them: Alpha Tallahassee and…he was one-upping everything that Tallahassee was doing. We thought that was such a fun concept that we might as well duplicate it [by adding another doppelgänger] so things evolved I guess over the course of the scripts. And there was a really great action sequence that I remember from the very first draft. The opening was going to be that a golf ball rolls down a thing and knocks over something that swings but anyway…[it was] a Rube Goldberg machine that resulted in the Washington Monument falling on a zombie and then we find Tallahassee and Columbus.”
After approving each draft himself, Fleischer would send it over to his cast to get their thoughts on it. Eisenberg noted that the most important thing to him when reading any of them was that Reese and Wernick’s signature voice was present. That voice is one of the key ingredients that made the first film work so well. That voice is most definitely present in the script that wound up becoming Double Tap. Eisenberg agrees, saying:
“The voice was so clear and it was so great. It was the same writers and…it just treated the characters in a different way. It treated the characters as if they were real emotional people just in this crazy world. You wouldn’t expect that from a movie like this, walking to the monitors where the writers are watching the takes and Rhett Reese is crying because he wrote this scene based on something in his personal life. You wouldn’t watch a movie like this, which is like a big splashy comedy, and think it was derived from the pain that somebody wrote a drama with. So because it’s imbued with that and because it’s derived from that, it has a special quality that transcends the genre.”
Zombieland: Double Tap will be released in theaters nationwide on October 18, 2019.
Interviews
George A. Romero’s ‘Day of the Dead’ Gets New Life After Search for Long-Lost Film Elements
“I was told that this couldn’t be found by some people that I worked with, and that just set a fire in me,” Scream Factory producer Jeff Roland says of the newly restored Day of the Dead in 4K from the seemingly long-lost original interpositive.
The four-disc release, loaded with special features and new interviews in addition to the restoration, arrives almost exactly three years after Roland began his long pursuit of the missing elements that he was warned were lost to time.
It’s a fitting journey for Day of the Dead, the third film in horror master George A. Romero‘s zombie series, considering the film’s long road to reappraisal after its initial failure at the box office in 1985. A huge departure from the popular Dawn of the Dead, the third film set its battle for humanity’s survival in an underground bunker, waged between a small group of scientists and ruthless soldiers.
It was underground where Roland began his pursuit of the missing interpositive elements, starting with the old-fashioned paper trail in Scream Factory’s basement, sorting through records from their 2013 Blu-ray release.
Scream Factory’s Years-Long Quest to Restore a Horror Classic
“So, there I was, going through boxes and boxes and boxes, trying to find this one specific invoice for a delivery company amongst thousands of pieces of paper,” Roland tells Bloody Disgusting. “That was the start. I was able to figure out the delivery service, and from there, it just went into a whirlwind of… drama? Yeah, there was some drama in there at one point; I thought it had been stolen by someone.”
Roland notes of his Indiana Jones-like journey, “the short and sweet of it is, it took forever, I was trying to find leads. Anything. I was seeing ridiculous things online, you know, like it was in a diamond mine in South Africa. I even followed up on that. I thought it would be hilarious if it were actually being kept in the Wampum mine. So I called them, and this poor woman who answered the phone sounded like she got this call every other day.”
Roland notes, “The records, for film vaults and such, aren’t the greatest. I’ll just say that. So, I think that’s, over time, that’s something that we definitely need to improve upon in this business.”
John Harrison Reflects on Day of the Dead‘s Surprising Legacy and Original Vision
While now considered another Romero zombie classic, critics and audiences rejected Day of the Dead at first, especially the Caribbean-style theme music from composer and first assistant director John Harrison.
Few are as surprised by the massive shift in the film’s reception as Harrison. The filmmaker and longtime Romero collaborator reflects, “Now, if you had asked any of us, and George included, that, ‘hey man, you know, in 45 years, this movie’s gonna be considered like a cinema classic.’ We all probably would have said, ‘Oh, we’re making a movie, man. We’re just having fun making a movie, and God, can you believe it, that people are paying us to do this?’ I don’t want to minimize it. I don’t want to say that we were just goofing around.”
Harrison continues, “All of us were really serious about our craft and about what we were trying to do. But I don’t think that any of us, maybe George, hopefully, had some feeling that his films would last for a while. I was a kid, you know? I just wanted to have fun, make movies, and be part of that whole scene. So, it was really disappointing when Day came out, because it was a bomb. I mean, let’s be truthful about it. It was a bomb. And people hated the score. So, 40-some years later, it’s become, for some people, the apogee of that first dead trilogy. The best of the three in its own way.”
Harrison also points out that Romero’s Land of the Dead would later face a similar reception and reappraisal, which was all the more fascinating considering early budget cuts caused Romero to drastically scale back Day of the Dead‘s story. A lot of what was excised was later revisited in Land of the Dead. “That was actually part of the original Day of the Dead concept,” Harrison explains of the 2005 film.
“Because of budget and schedule and so forth and so on, and ratings,” he tells BD. “George couldn’t do it, and that’s why we ended up with the more condensed version of Day of the Dead, which everybody now knows and loves. In a way, I’m kind of glad, because it has a real identity being trapped in those caves, and the end of the world, the two sides of society. Going at it, headbutting, to try and survive. But the whole Fiddler’s Green idea and all of that stuff that ended up in Land of the Dead was part of the original Day.”
George Romero Predicted Social Media and Modern Culture
Suzanne Romero, founder & president of the George A. Romero Foundation and the late filmmaker’s wife, breaks down the film’s trajectory even further. “The original Day of the Dead script, I think, at one point, it was written for a $12 million budget, and it was basically cut in half. And it’s a great script. But that’s what happens with filmmakers, and you gotta make do.”
She continues, “But I really think that this film is really for the fans and people who love physical media. And in terms of the foundation, well, anytime George Romero is mentioned is good, because what we are doing is to provide a healthy legacy. We’re uplifting his legacy, we’re supporting the archive, and we’re also supporting the Horror Study Center. So, all of these three things are what the Foundation is striving to do. As far as I’m concerned, the more we say George Romero’s name, the better it is.”
The mention of Land of the Dead brings up one recurring theme of Romero’s work: the filmmaker’s ability to keep his pulse so thoroughly on the current social climate in a way that feels prescient.
Roland agrees, “I think one of the most amazing things that doesn’t get talked about enough is in 2007, he came out with Diary of the Dead. That pretty much predicted YouTube culture. I mean, we’re going through it right now, the exact things that were happening in Diary of the Dead. It’s incredible.”
“Well, that was intentional,” Harrison says, “because I was part of that and worked with Peter [Grunwald] and George on developing that whole script and production. And that was definitely intentional. There was nothing accidental or, ‘Great timing, guys!’ It was not like that at all. It was intentional.”
Suzanne Romero agrees, “[George] was very wary of social media, but very wary of the internet. He was always very suspicious and thought that we ought to beware; we ought to be walking very carefully into this space.“
“Which we haven’t done, of course,” Harrison adds.
“No, of course not,” Romero responds. “And AI. I mean, he would be writing about AI right now and thinking, danger! What the fuck are you doing, people? But not only that, but he also did it in a layman’s way. You know, he really brought it to very familiar language, and people that spoke to each other, it was in a very natural way, and it was the way he developed characters. The way he evolved with how his women were more powerful, because he kind of regretted that in Night of the Living Dead, [Barbra] was weak. He always thought the women ought to be much stronger, and I think it started with Season of the Witch.”
Everyone Wanted to Be a Zombie in a Romero Movie
George A. Romero’s legacy certainly looms large over Scream Factory’s impressive new release, offering a comprehensive look at Day of the Dead through a dizzying number of new audio commentaries, featurettes, and interviews detailing everything from the “mine fever” that spread among the cast and crew to Ernest Dickerson‘s high-pressure day on set running the second unit camera.
That’s also reflected in Romero’s zombies themselves, dating back to 1968’s Night of the Living Dead.
“In Pittsburgh, it was a badge of honor to be a zombie in a George Romero movie,” Harrison recounts. “Everybody from the Dean of Students at Carnegie Mellon to the presidents of corporations. I had a story that came out of Dawn. I was pitching a commercial for my own little company, and I’d done a bit for George as ‘Screwdriver Zombie’ on Dawn. I didn’t get cleaned up enough, and I went to this meeting at the first thing in the morning. The vice president of this bank is looking at me, going, ‘Is there something wrong with you?’ I said, ‘No, no, that’s what I know? I’m fine.’ He said, ‘Well, you’re bleeding out of your ear.’ Okay, so then I had to tell them the whole story. And he listened to it, and I thought, well, this is gonna be ridiculous. I’m coming in talking about being a zombie in a movie, and I want to sell him this, like, multi-thousand-dollar commercial that the bank is gonna pay for. He listened very carefully to me, and he said, ‘Well, listen, we’ll talk about the commercial, but do you think I could be a zombie in one?”
That hasn’t changed in the present, either.
Suzanne Romero confirms, “We’re producing George’s film, Twilight of the Dead, and we get requests, ‘Can I be a zombie in this film?’ So, even today, people are very interested, and yet it’s terrible. I mean, it’s hours and hours of makeup.”
Scream Factory’s Day of the Dead four-disc 4K UHD + Blu-ray Collector’s Edition releases on June 16.
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