New details about Diablo Cody’s adaptation of S.G. Browne’s Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament surfaced today. The project, announced last February, has been laboring in development. Now, the script is being shopped to directors, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Scarlett Johansson are “loosely attached” to the project. Read the full story

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We’ve got a little television news here on The Film Stage today, but that’s just because we know how much you all love zombies, and this story is full of them. Read the full story

Natalie Portman will be able to soon add “Period piece zombie film” to her body of work as she is now set to star in and produce Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. The film is an adaptation of a novel of the same name by Seth Grahame-Smith.

Variety describes the film as telling “the timeless story of a woman’s quest for love and independence amid the outbreak of a deadly virus that turns the undead into vicious killers.”  The story takes much of the classic novel by Jane Austen and mashes it together with what is clearly the most likely of situations — a terrible zombie outbreak. Portman, who will surely be classically beautiful as always, will play Elizabeth Bennet, a fiery zombie killing version of her novel born counterpart.

Richard Kelly will be a co-producer on the project with Portman and the film will be financed and distributed by Lionsgate, but as a director has still not been chosen, the approach taken with the direction and tone of the story will be interesting to discover. Will it be more romance and drama focused or more straight horror?

Either way, something about Natalie Portman in 19th Century English attire (a tattered corset perhaps?) slaying zombies makes me feel all giddy and tingly in a way that let’s just say I probably wouldn’t explain to my grandmother.

Are you as excited as I am? If so, have you read the book?

Source: Variety

by Merrill Barr and Dan Mecca

So what happens when you take guns, Woody Harrelson doing what he does best and Emma Stone with a shotgun? You get a little thing called Zombieland. Everything about this film is near perfect: the script, the story, the dialogue, the cinematography and the editing all a quintessential example of a take-no-prisoners horror/comedy and a better one than Edgar Wright’s comparable Shaun of the Dead.

One thing that really pushes this film is some solid, well-timed voice-over narration by Jesse Eisenberg (Adventureland), who plays the film’s hero Columbus, as well as some really clever super-imposed titles throughout the film that help add color to the narration.

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George Romero’s original zombie film from 1968, Night of the Living Dead, has been announced to be remade in 3D by THR. The director is newcomer Zebediah de Soto, and it is described as a “re-imagining” with the title Night of the Living Dead: Origins. This is similar to director Zack Snyder who for his first feature film made a remake of Dawn of the Dead — the sequel to Night of the Living Dead.  This will also be the third time the original has been remade. First in 1990 directed by Romero’s main make-up guru Tom Savini and again in 2006 in 3D. De Soto’s will also be in 3D. De Soto said the style he was going for is “an American-style anime” (?) and wants to use the latest technology to capture the 3D effect.

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