Eli Craig is in negotiations to direct Sony’s planned Zombieland comedy series…
The casting call went out last week, and now Tucker & Dale vs. Evil director Eli Craig is in talks to direct the in-development Zombieland TV show that Amazon plans to make its streaming service’s first original scripted series.
Currently in negotiations to helm the light-hearted take on the zombie apocalypse, Craig would be a supremely sensible fit in our eyes, not least because in 2011, he ranked Zombieland as his fifth favourite horror comedy, a top ten list that also included Dead Snow, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!, Hatchet, Slither, Behind The Mask: The Rise Of Leslie Vernon, Young Frankenstein, Evil Dead II, Ghostbusters and, at number one, Shaun Of The Dead.
Here’s what he had to say about the Ruben Fleischer-directed film:
"Zombieland was just one of these fun rides. The first thirty minutes were probably some of the most exciting and humorous action-comedy-horror filmaking I've ever seen.
In horror comedies, and in most horror films in general, you see the whole incident kind of play out slow, but they started it right in the middle of the action and they did it in a very convention-breaking way. Most screenwriters and film schools would say, "Don't have a lot of voiceovers because it takes you out of the story." But in this case, the first fifteen minutes of the film were all voiceover, and you see Jesse Eisenburg running around and just blowing up stuff and shooting at it, and really setting the tempo of the film so, so high.
I think Zombieland brings the sensibility of Cloverfield into the action, and it brings an intensity to it. Ultimately I felt like the film, because it began so high, couldn't live up to the first thirty minutes. But I think by and large they did a great job with it."
