Jane Austen...and Zombies?

As I write, people in Hollywood are fighting--fighting!--over the film rights to "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," which injects a lot of undead action amid Austen's revered novel. The rewrite is to be published in April. As for the movie, expect it to follow.

Nobody can resist this shit! I'll pay double to see it.

Quoting from the Sunday Times:

"The forthcoming novel is the first mainstream “mash-up” of Austen and horror, two of the most popular film genres of the past decade. It has been made possible only because Austen is out of copyright.

This weekend Seth Grahame-Smith, the author of P&P&Z who is based in Los Angeles, revealed how he and an editor at Quirk Books, an independent publisher, developed a diagram tracing connections between seminal period novels to cult movie genres, including robots, vampires and aliens.

“It quickly became obvious that Jane [Austen] had laid down the blueprint for a zombie novel,” said Grahame-Smith, a television comedy writer. “Why else in the original should a regiment arrive on Lizzie Bennet’s doorstep when they should have been off fighting Napoleon? It was to protect the family from an invasion of brain-eaters, obviously.”

Obviously!

Jane Austen--undead and loving it. I say, bring it!