Did you know that ultra-popular zombie movie Zombieland was originally created as a television series that was picked up by CBS? Well, it was indeed, and it’s not completely out of the question that some day in the future it will try once again to find a home on your TV set.
Writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick spoke to MTV recently and explained how things had come to be. In 2005, they crafted the story as a pilot episode and sold it to CBS, but it was eventually decided that it just wouldn’t work at a series…as you might imagine. Clearly, if this was ever going to happen, it would have to be on HBO or Showtime — maybe FX at the very minimum, but that wouldn’t be preferable.
Because Zombieland was such a huge hit, the writing duo are already well into writing a sequel to it. They’ve also proven themselves a talented team, and have been hired to write a sequel to G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and also the adaptation of popular comic Deadpool, which will star Ryan Reynolds.
So what are the chances that we will see a zombie TV show someday? Well, Reese and Wernick have themselves high hopes for it to happen, and plans in order if it ever does.
I think that’s what we would do probably is recast it – or at least, our four leads. And then, beyond that, we can introduce any characters we want – and that was going to be the joy of the TV show, bringing in new people and killing them off, not killing them off, depending on how we felt about them. We really wanted to explore that.
It would have to be shot differently. It’s funny; you write action and you write gore and you write horror and it’s all how its shot, how it’s presented. You can write it as graphic as you want, it’s just [up to the director] to cut away on the gory stuff on TV. Whereas, you would show it with the clown and the mallet in the movie, where the blood squirts all over the place.
We always thought [it should be a TV series]. If you watch the movie with that in mind, you will see some remnants of the television show. We have the “˜Zombie Kill of the Week,’ which was always intended to happen every week. The movie ends on a cliffhanger; it doesn’t have a real resolution. [The movie’s ending] is just our guys driving off into the sunset for some new adventures. That’s because, that’s how the television pilot ended.
Would you want to see zombies running wild on a weekly basis? Again, I think that if it was on the right network, like an HBO, it would be great fun. But if this happened with someone like CBS, I would have little interest and don’t see how it would work at all.
T think it would be perfect for a TV series on the right network.
Comment by scrotumbagmonkeyflicker — February 12, 2010 @ 4:20 am
Definitely agree that something like this would be better on Showtime (a CBS sister company) instead of actually being on CBS. Just worry about the story. Zombieland was an awesome movie and while I think a sequel or two would probably work, I wonder about the long term potential. There were (so far) only 32 rules for surviving in Zombieland and while the unmentioned rules could probably be explored further, the show will eventually get boring like “My Name is Earl” did. And I think that they’d need to sign on the same movie cast in order for the humor and personalities to work. I don’t know. I really like Zombieland as a movie franchise though.
For zombies on TV, I’m really really looking forward to “The Walking Dead” as being developed by AMC and based on the comic book of the same name! Sadly, I’d wager that there’s probably only enough room on the programming slate for one successful zombie movie. All zombie fans would definitely check out one show but for multiple shows, I’d think zombie fans would find their flavor and stick to one or the other, thereby reducing overall viewership of both shows individually. Something like that would end up killing both shows (no pun intended).
Or perhaps I’m way too bored at work this morning and that’s why I’ve analyzed zombie TV shows to death (pun intended that time)
Comment by Paul — February 12, 2010 @ 9:24 am
oh, please no. just no.
Comment by Sierra — February 12, 2010 @ 10:46 am
I’d love to see that, yeah. But the four leads should not be safe, as implied here. A staple of zombie movies is that NO-ONE is safe. My only major complaint about the movie Zombieland was that no-one we cared about got eaten or zombified or killed in any fashion at all (except the great man himself). All the deaths happened to complete strangers in slow-motion flash-backs.
Comment by Shilling — February 12, 2010 @ 3:45 pm
I feel that if a successful zombie tv show is made … it would be more dramatic and entail surviving while looking for a “safe” place while finding other survivors and losing some people along the way. We all know how something funny wont always make a decent show .. hence the Caveman show (from the geico commercials) that lasted all a month on tv.
Comment by GiantRobotMunki — February 12, 2010 @ 4:11 pm
I would love it to be a TV show. The Zombie kill of the week would be hilarious.
Comment by Ben — March 10, 2010 @ 9:37 am
I agree with the first poster about the walking dead….if amcs adaptation is even anywhere near how great the comic is it should be awesome!! ( At least I hope they dont f**k it up!)
Comment by oneill2310 — April 22, 2010 @ 12:24 am