It’s no secret that Zombieland: Double Tap spent an awful long time teetering on the fringes of development – hell, the first movie released all the way back in 2009.
And while 10 years have lapsed since we last saw Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, Jesse Eisenberg, and Abigail Breslin laying waste to the undead, it turns out the core cast wanted to jump-start production on Double Tap as soon as Zombieland hit theaters. There was just one problem: screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick had just landed the gig of a lifetime in Deadpool, and wound up penning its no-holds-barred sequel.
In doing so, Reese and Wernick pushed Double Tap onto the back-burner, as Eisenberg and Co. only wanted to commit to a sequel once the script was in place. Via The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, the actor recounts that journey to the big screen.
We waited 10 years to do the movie—we didn’t wait. We were trying to do the movie right after the first one, cause the first one was so popular, and then we just couldn’t like—we just waited for the best script. In the meantime, the two writers, Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick did ‘Deadpool’ and then we were kind of waiting for them to finish that, so they can write this… we’re all waiting for the best script.
Not that you can blame Reese and Wernick for doubling down on the Merc With a Mouth, but it’s pretty clear that Jesse Eisenberg and the Powers That Be at Sony were willing to wait until such time as Reese and Wernick had enough time in their busy schedules to finish the “best” version of the Zombieland script. And here we are. It’s just as well 20th Century Fox didn’t get the chance to fast-track Deadpool 3…
Zombieland: Double Tap shoots for theaters this Friday, October 18th, and the first reactions have hailed Sony’s undead follow-up as a blood-soaked delight.
