Warm Bodies Pushed to 2013; Dave Franco Says Zombie Romance Is "Grounded in Reality"
Posted 02.13.12 by Ryan
2013 is looking like it will be a good year for Nicholas Hoult — about as good as 2012 was supposed to be.
After playing Beast in Fox's adaptation of X-Men: First Class, Hoult was cast in director Bryan Singer's Jack the Giant Killer and then as an existentially tormented zombie in writer-director Jonathan Levine's adaptation of Warm Bodies. Both movies were set for release this year, but Warner Bros. decided to push Jack from its June release to March 2013, and now Summit Entertainment has decided to move Warm Bodies as well.
THR reports that Summit has moved Warm Bodies from its August 10th release date to February 1st instead. Based on the book by Isaac Marion and adapted by Levine, Warm Bodies will (eventually) follow Hoult as R, a zombie who falls for a human girl named Julie (Teresa Palmer) and protects her from the zombie hordes just as he discovers that, besides being a zombie, he may have some humanity left. Dave Franco (the upcoming 21 Jump Street and brother of James), who plays the leader of the resistance in the movie, recently told MTV that he decided to take part in Warm Bodies partly because Levine's take on the zombie genre, which Franco said is "grounded in reality," despite its undead premise.
To be completely honest, I was a little hesitant about it at first because it was another zombie movie and there have been a lot of those recently. The main reason I was excited about it was because of [director] Jonathan Levine. I am a huge fan of his. I loved The Wackness and of course 50/50, but I knew that even though it was this genre we’ve seen over and over, I knew he’d bring his own take to it and make it interesting. I know there are going to be comparisons to the Twilight movies and I’m not trying to sh** on them in any way, but this one will stand apart. Even though it is a zombie monster movie in a way, it is very grounded in reality.
Franco says his character, which is named Perry Kelvin, has an arc, starting as a "naive" kid and turning into a hardened zombie-killer with a "one-track mind" to "end the zombie apocalypse."
There definitely is an arc there. He starts out as this naive, sweet, wide-eyed kid who’s in love with Julie and witnesses his father turning into a zombie and dying in front of his eyes. It hardens him. He becomes this kid who loses all humanity and has this one-track mind of killing off, ending the zombie apocalypse. There was a lot to play with. It was fun to do a more dramatic role.
Despite having both his 2012 movies moved to 2013, Hoult may see his star rise next year. Franco says that the British actor "killed it" in his zombie role, despite not talking for much of the movie.
Nick Hoult, it was one of these roles that could have been a huge disaster. He barely talks in the movie. The only time he talks for the most part is in voice over and when he’s talking in voice over he’s very eloquent, almost poetic and when he’s actually interacting with other humans and zombies he can only kind of grunt and moan. It could have been a huge disaster, but Nick Hoult is so talented and so subtle and real that it all hinges on him and he killed it.
In a little less than a year, audiences will be able to see if Franco is right.