Matt Smith’s leap from TV to movies has proven his ability to play a broad expanse of characters. Most well-known for his four-season slog on Doctor Who, Smith made the transition across the pond from Britain to the US for Ryan Gosling’s directorial debut, Lost River. While that project may have tanked at the festivals earlier in the year, Smith remained unscathed. Going on to play an as-yet-unnamed character in Terminator: Genisys, which was just concluded shooting, he’s now snagged another juicy role in Pride And Prejudice And Zombies.
The genre comedy re-telling of Jane Austen’s seminal classic Pride And Prejudice was written by Seth Grahame-Smith and published back in 2009. Its plagued production has seen the adaptation suffer a number of setbacks during that time. Last month, however, production shifted gears with the main body of characters being cast.
Smith will join the film as “Mr. Collins, a parson who is on the lookout for a wife and proposes to Bennett.” Bennett is of course Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine of Austen’s original novel who in the zombified version contends with an endless supply of suitors and hordes of the undead. The Brit actor will be onscreen alongside Lily James (as Bennet), Sam Riley, Bella Heathcote, Douglas Booth and Jack Huston.
Directed by Burr Steers (Igby Goes Down), Pride And Prejudice And Zombies is set to start shooting September 24th.
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.”
So begins Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an expanded edition of the beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield. Can Elizabeth vanquish the spawn of Satan? And overcome the social prejudices of the class-conscious landed gentry? Complete with romance, heartbreak, swordfights, cannibalism, and thousands of rotting corpses, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies transforms a masterpiece of world literature into something you’d actually want to read.
