Few challenges, however, are as unusual as the latest foe facing Elizabeth Bennet of Pride and Prejudice – a plague of the undead sent to reduce the picturesque villages of Longbourn and Meryton to smouldering ruins.
Hollywood studios are bidding to turn a radical reworking of Austen’s most popular book, now called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a parody to be published in April, into a blockbuster movie.
Desperate for new ideas, studio chiefs hope “P&P&Z” will mark the bloody birth of a feral offspring of classic British literature: “monster-lit”.
The idea of mixing different genres has spread from pop music, where old tunes are merged to make fresh hits, to the internet with fan homages such as Lizzie the Vampire Slayer, where Bennet is transported into the world of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
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.
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From then on it was easy to imagine Bennet and her four sisters as zombie slayers, trained since childhood in the deadly arts of Chinese kung fu, and Fitzwilliam Darcy as a promoter of the socially superior ninja skills of Japan. Together they stand bonnet to epaulette against a plague of cannibalis-tic interlopers from the accursed city of London.
Grahame-Smith hopes that his talent agency, William Morris, will sign a film deal with a studio in the next few weeks.
“About 85% is the original Jane Austen text,” he said. “I hated her when I was forced to read Austen in school, but when I started rereading I realised she was a brutal, but very funny, satirist. I can only aspire to be as mean-spirited as she could be.”
Other talent agencies are pitching their own slate of monster-lit titles. They include a version of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, where Catherine, the deceased heroine, returns as a Japanese-style ghost not only to haunt but also to terrorise Heathcliff.
In a reworking of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre , M r Rochester has something more terrible than an insane spouse in his attic, and a version of George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss is powered by human sacrifice.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Just after finding out about Pride and Predator, it looks like there is another Jane Austen turned genre film possibly heading out way named Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Based on some upcoming graphic novel I didn’t know about. It looks this this is a whole genre now!
