Last week, Amazon unveiled Zombieland and thirteen other TV series pilots to watch for free on Amazon Instant Video. The outlet's plan is to track the customer reviews, ratings and view counts for the pilots and then, based on that data, decide which of the 8 comedies and 6 children’s shows will get a full series order. It’s a distinctly different approach than the one Netflix, Amazon’s most direct competitor, is taking. Netflix has given several high-pedigree shows direct to series orders including the David Fincher/Kevin Spacey political drama House of Cards and the upcoming fourth season of Arrested Development.
We had the opportunity to speak with Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, who wrote and produced the Zombieland pilot for Amazon, recently about their approach to the project and hopes for the series – should it be picked up. The pair says that they are, daily, obsessively checking the response on Amazon, which as of right now, sits with an average rating of 3.7 out of 5 stars from roughly 3,000 customer reviews. “We’ve been living with this project for about 10 years, so we’re very invested,” Wernick said.
The writing team began their partnership in 2001 writing and executive producing Spike TV’s The Joe Schmo Show, and originally wrote Zombieland as a television pilot. So, the Amazon deal is a return to their roots of sorts. Of course, one of the biggest fan concerns about the series has been the recasting of the roles that were so indelibly created by Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin and of course, Woody Harrelson in the 2009 Ruben Fleischer-directed film.
“We had four Academy Award-winners in the movie, and that’s not including Emma Stone, so yes, we were nervous about recasting,” Wernick says. The writing team says that they love their new cast, though. In fact, the character of Tallahassee was originally written with Kirk Ward – the actor who now plays him in the Amazon pilot – in mind. “When it became a movie we needed a movie star, and that’s when Woody Harrelson was cast,” Wernick added, pointing to a long tradition in film, television and Broadway of characters being played by multiple actors. When asked about their decision to keep the central team of four, rather than recreate the world with a new band of misfits, Wernick said that he felt that, “Zombieland is the characters.” He added, “The idea had always been to team the world’s most fearful (Columbus) and fearless (Tallahassee) men,” as co-combatants in the zombie apocalypse.
“We wanted to capture the tone [of the film],” Reese says, and they feel as though the pilot has done that. One of the more interesting aspects of the episode was the opening sequence which depicted a sandwich delivery-guy/pre-zombie-killing-machine Tallahassee. Wernick and Reese say we can expect to see more onset-of-the-outbreak flashback sequences should the show go to series.
As to the “rules of surviving Z-land” well, Columbus’ code is obviously a huge part of the mythos for this particular world. As such, some viewers have wondered how closely the team plans to stick to the rules as established in the movie. In the film, rule number 4 is “double tap,” meaning, make sure to shoot that zombie twice. “Yeah, we sort of let that go in the pilot for the moment where Tallahassee shoots a zombie from behind,” Reese laughs, adding that they just thought it would be cool to see a zombie killed that way. “These are infected human beings, in the vein of 28 Days Later, so [unlike in the lion’s share of zombie depictions] it doesn’t take a head shot to kill them,” Reese added. “I always think it’s kind of funny when people get up in arms about zombie mythology,” Wernick said. Because, you know, “zombies don’t exist,” Reese added.
It’s unclear when Amazon will make a final decision about a Zombieland series. The outlet is being somewhat vague about the exact time-frame for the pilot selection process both publicly, and, it would seem, with their creators. Wernick and Reese haven’t been told when they will hear the yay or nay on a series order, nor do they know if there is a limit to the pilots that Amazon is willing to produce. “It could be 13, it could be one,” Reese said. However, if they do get a series order, the team plans to go into production this summer for a 13-episode season.
Roth Cornet is an Entertainment Editor for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @RothCornet and IGN at Roth-IGN.
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