19 / 89
“All that’s still going
on,“ he adds, “the romance
and the dynamics of Darcy and
Elizabeth’s sparring are still
there.
“I went back and mined a
lot of Austen’s work to get the
interstitial dialogue, as well. The
big wink in this movie is that
there is no wink – everybody’s
playing it straight. You have to
play it straight, otherwise it runs
out of gas.
“We’ve stayed true to the
characters,” he continues,
“but instead of just being the
smartest people in the room,
the Bennet sisters are the most
formidable fighters as well.”
OTHER CLASSIC LITERARY MASH-UPS
WE’D LIKE TO SEE
…
WITHERING HEIGHTS
Heathcliff’s gypsy ancestry sees him stricken
by an ancient curse, which causes him to
slowly waste away in the arms of lover Cathy
on the Yorkshire moors.
THE DIARY OF ANNE
FRANKENSTEIN
Hiding from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic,
a young Jewish girl attempts to create life in
the form of an avenging Golem.
THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA
MONSTER
An elderly and obsessed Cuban fisherman
struggles to land the catch of a lifetime – a
Kraken – in the Gulf Stream off the coast of
Florida.
WAR AND PIECES
In an alternate 1812, it’s not Napoleon who
invades Russia but rather a hungry zombie
horde, leaving a trail of dismembered locals
in their wake.
• Apologies to Emily Bronte,
Anne Frank, Ernest Hemingway
and Leo Tolstoy
something that stuck with me,”
he recalls.
So how did he go about
integrating the living dead into
Jane Austen’s classic for the big
screen?
“The way I approached it was
to create this alternate England
where a zombie plague had
happened, and staging
Pride
and Prejudice
within it,” he
explains. “There’s a point where
the movie has to turn because
of the zombie story, but I kept
the scenes and the characters
true to the original, as bizarre as
that sounds. I had a very basic
approach to it, which was the
title,
Pride and Prejudice and
Zombies
– and that’s what the
movie is.”
Personal pride and social
prejudice are cast aside when an
army of the living dead disrupts
the Bennet family and plans
to wed Elizabeth (Lily James)
and her sister Jane (Bella
Heathcote) to Mr. Darcy
(Sam Riley) and Mr.
Bingley (Douglas
Booth), respectively.
Consequently,
marriage takes
a backseat to killing
zombies.
“As it should,” laughs Steers.
19
FEATURE
CINEMA
CINEMA
By remaining faithful to
Austen’s story, Steers is
confident that
Pride and
Prejudice and Zombies
will
appeal to both horror fans and
lovers of the original novel.
“When we’ve screened it,
it’s worked on both levels,”
he says.
However, all of this begs
the question – would Jane
Austen be turning in her
own grave at this revision to
her beloved masterpiece?
“No, but I imagine the
Janeites will be having kittens,”
Steers offers. “I probably use
more of Jane Austen in this than
most of the recent versions
of
Pride and Prejudice
, and
actually went back to some of
her other material. The fact that
her characters and her themes
are carried on in this, how could
you not be proud of the fact that
your novel could survive in any
form?”
•
Pride and
Prejudice and
Zombies
is in cinemas from
Feb 25 and will be
reviewed in the
next issue.