Everyone Wants a ‘Zombieland’ Sequel
Zombieland gave Woody Harrelson his biggest North American box office opening of his career and has more than doubled its $23.6M budget in US domestic box office takings alone ($47.8M) – and 90% of its international rollout has yet to occur.
The film has also done wonders for director Ruben Fleischer and writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick after nearly every review on the planet gave it the thumbs up. It would be fair to say that with an IMDB rating of 8.4 and a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 88% Zombieland is a winner.
Given all that, and given the ending (which I won’t comment on, you’ll just have to see it for yourself), there’s no surprise to hear talk of a sequel.
“We would love it, and everyone involved creatively wants to do another one,” Paul Wernick told MTV. “Woody came up to us after the final cut of the last scene and gave us a hug and said, ‘I’ve never wanted to do a sequel in the previous movies I’ve done until this one.’ ”
It seems the entire crew wants back as well. Wernick and Reese told MTV the returning core crew would include Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin and of course director Ruben Fleischer.
The sequel doesn’t have a script yet nor a green-light, but the writers confirm material for the script isn’t a problem.
“It has lived in our heads for four-and-a-half years,” Wernick said. “We developed it and wrote it as a spec TV pilot in the summer of 2005. We’ve got a long brainstorming document that still to this day gets updated on a near-weekly basis with ideas. We’ve got tons of new ideas swimming in our head.”
But will one sequel be enough?
“We would love to do several sequels,” Wernick said. “We would love to also see it on television. It would make a wonderful TV series.”
As a final note, one of the roadblocks to a fast-tracked Zombieland sequel seemed to be that writers Rheese and Wernick were also working on the script to the Spider-Man spinoff Venom. Now that Sony have handed that task off to Gary Ross, I’m guessing a new window of opportunity just opened for Zombieland 2.
wahoo4: 
Paulina: 
Siôn: 
steve from holland: 
Alan: 
M: 
posh: 
otterman20: 
Lee: 
Koen: 
February 19th, 2010 at 1:00 am
I could live without the 3D. Too often, it’s merely a gimmick to have something leap out at you and go “BOOGA-BOOGA-BOOGA!” Notable exception was “Avatar,” which, for all its flaws as a story, made truly lovely use of 3D not to jump out, but to gently *recede* and create immersive depth (far more depth than the script, as it happens).
As for a Z-Land sequel…
OK, so here’s how I see it. In the sequel, the troupe stops in Columbus, OH after all (where else do they have to go?). Once there, they discover that Columbus’ parents (”Paranoid shut-ins,” remember?) are not only still alive, but have carved out a fortress-like enclave of fiercely disciplined but VERY eccentric survivors. Columbus gets to introduce Wichita/Krista to the ‘rents after all. Hilarity ensues.
Oh, and as for Tallahasse? Remember how evasive he was at answering the whole “laying pipe” question himself? How appalled he was at the notion that Columbus wanted to go Heels-to-Jesus with Wichita? The lack of mention of poor Buck’s mother?
Tallahasse just might be gay. Interesting, yes? Can anyone say Neil Patrick Harris?
Kind of a limited shelf life for the franchise, though; these zombies are VERY sick, not (apparently…) breeding, and rapidly running out of fresh humans to nosh on. Really is just a matter of waiting them out.
And did *anyone* think of using a CB radio?! (”Breaker-breaker: NOT a zombie, here, c’mon back!”) And is anyone alive at the power generation plants (where’s all that electricity coming from? Pretty good security at nuke facilities…)