Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Will "Stay True" to Jane Austen, Director Says
Posted 08.25.11 by Ryan
Now that Fright Night is in theaters, Craig Gillespie can concentrate on directing Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. The movie's based on the 2009 best-selling mashup novel from Seth Grahame-Smith, who added the undead to Jane Austen's classic story.
While talking to The LA Times, the Australian director explained that Pride and Prejudice and Zombies will stay "incredibly true to Austen," making tone the ultimate challenge of the movie.
It's another tone issue, that's where the challenge is. It's a little more serious than Fright Night. It's staying incredibly true to Jane Austen and the humor that you get from Jane Austen and the dynamic of this society and the humor and insight that comes from the situations that she wrote about. And then you also get the horror of zombies.
Gillespie says that they've "just finished the script" and the production is now "starting to talk to cast." Emma Stone was reportedly offerred the lead role of Elizabeth Bennett, but turned it down. While Gillespie is still without a cast, he's looking forward to moving from vampires to zombies.
Zombies have been stepping up of late with, obviously, The Walking Dead and it’s a fun mash-up. We’re working on it now... so we’ll see what happens.
The movie has certainly had a troubled start. Gillespie was hired in April to replace the departing Mike White (Year of the Dog), who had been brought in to replace the departed David O. Russell (The Fighter). Once he landed the job, Gillespie immediately brought his Fright Night screenwriter on board to perform a rewrite on the script, which was left over from Russell's tenure (Gillespie recently revealed that Russell will still get a writing credit).