Ugh. Zombies. While they've not quite overtaken vampires as far as omnipresence in multiplexes go, the last decade has seen a proliferation of pictures featuring the undead, from "28 Days Later" to "REC," and it shows no signs of letting up, with "The Walking Dead" proving a giant hit on cable, and both Jonathan Levine's zombie romance "Warm Bodies" and megabudget Brad Pitt vehicle "World War Z" due in 2013. Are we doomed to see the same old re-animated tropes over and over again until someone eats our brains? Or will someone be able to come up with a new take on the genre?
Well, Chloe Moretz and Paddy Considine certainly hope it's the latter, as the two actors are circling a project in the genre that looks like it might be able to bring a fresh spin: namely, "Maggie," a script from writer John Scott III that made the Black List a few years back. The film, to be directed by commercials helmer and titles designer Henry Hobson, is set in the aftermath of an undead outbreak, and follows a father whose unconditional love for his daughter is tested when she becomes infected, and slowly succumbs to zombification.
Screen Daily were the first to report the involvement of Moretz, who's soon to get underway on the remake of "Carrie," and Variety also say that she's in talks to play the title character (the girl facing a future as one of the walking dead), and added that the brilliant Considine is in negotiations to play the father. Hobson and Scott have been getting a lot of attention recently: the duo are attached to an adapation of Isaac Asimov's "The Caves Of Death," and are also adapting Tad Williams' fantasy series "Otherland" for Warner Bros, and they've certainly gotten the casting off to a promising start. The picture has a $10 million budget, and is planned to go before cameras in September, so we should see this towards the end of 2013.
Look forward to this project at least due to brilliant Mr. Paddy Considine. People should check his Tyrannosaur or at least Dead Man's Shoes.
I think the biggest problem with the zombie genre (or at least the cause of people's disdain) is that anyone with a halfway decent camera tries to make a zombie movie because it's considered "easy." It's not outrageous to think that. While this is a fictional example, the kids in "Super 8" wanted to make a zombie movie because they could do it without spending much money. Teaching your friends to do a zombie walk and drool blood is cheaper than hiring Rick Baker to design a creature, after all.
Cost-effectiveness leads to an overwhelming (though, ultimately underwhelming) amount of movies that inexplicably find their way to DVD. Of late, European filmmakers have been consistently taking more original stabs at the genre (not to cross metaphors) with movies like "Colin," the "REC" movies (yes, a "virus" movie, but still), "Dead Snow," and "The Dead" to name a few. But for every success, there are many imitators, and its because of the influx of poorly made, half-written zombie movies that there is always a cry for more "original" zombie films, while vampire films can continue to be more prolific and unoriginal (with the exception of "Stakeland").
Myself, all I want is a well-made zombie film, something that took someone more than a few days to come up with. The script for "Warm Bodies" is pretty good and the Straczynski script for "World War Z" was really great, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed for them both as well as "Maggie." Otherwise, there are some great American indie zombie movies out there: "Deadheads," "The Revenant" and "I Sell the Dead," but only the latter of which is available on Netflix, while "Deadheads" is on Amazon.
As both 28 Days Later and REC are European horror films they are infected not zombies…28 Days Later are people infected with a 'rage virus' while the REC seemingly is a more of 'demon virus' which came from exorcisms performed by the Catholic church….