If ever a project was in need of help it’s the upcoming adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith‘s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a novel combining Jane Austen‘s classic tale with flesh eaters, as Craig Gillespie (Lars and the Real Girl) becomes the third director to depart from the film.
Originally the film was set to be directed by recent Academy Award-nominee David O. Russell (The Fighter), but as he indicated earlier this year, the budget was a big concern for him:
“I thought $40 to $50 million was a bargain price to make a Sherlock Holmes-style period action romance that happened to have zombies in it, Russell said. The studio budgeted it as a genre zombie movie and gave me $25 to $28 million. I was like, that’s not cool. We have crazy big action sequences in it. It’s very commercial; we have a major romance. It’s a period film. And we’re doing it on the budget that we did The Fighter? It made no sense to me. That, I found, was frustrating.”
Then, director Mike White was briefly attached before Gillespie became involved. Apparently, the problem for Gillespie was a disagreement over casting. Aside from directors, it seems like we’ve been hearing multiple names attached to the project for the lead such as Natalie Portman, Emma Stone, Anne Hathaway, Scarlett Johansson, Mia Wasikowska and Blake Lively.
The screenplay is still based off of Russell’s original which has undergone a rewrite by Marti Noxon, who recently worked on the remake of Fright Night. It’ll be interesting to see which director comes aboard next. The first two directors seemed like really odd choices for this type of material, but Gillespie at least had some experience with horror from directing Fright Night.
Who do you think should take over next? Who would you like to see as the lead?
(Source: The Playlist)
Published: Oct 30, 2011 10:08 pm