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Natalie Portman will slay Zombies in Jane Austen Film

Posted: Fri Dec 11, 2009 11:14 pm
by psijac
I am obsessed with zombies

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8407986.stm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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Natalie Portman is set to slay the undead in a movie adaptation of best-seller Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, it is reported.
Portman will play feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet, according to trade publication Variety.
The novel, by Seth Grahame-Smith, takes Jane Austen's classic and adds a new subplot in which the story takes place as the dead rise from the grave.
The five Bennett sisters are all trained in deadly martial arts.
Portman is also set to produce the film for Lionsgate.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which was first published in April 2009 by Quirk books, got to number three on the New York Times best-seller list.
A prequel has been announced, Dawn of the Dreadfuls, which is due to be published in March 2010.
Quirk books have also released another novel based on an Austen work, entitled Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.
the book: http://www.thinkgeek.com/books/scifi/b747/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Re: Natalie Portman will slay Zombies in Jane Austen Film

Posted: Sat Dec 12, 2009 12:46 am
by The Annoyed Man
I just got done reading Monster Hunter International. Compared to Master Vampires, Wights, and Lycanthropes, Zombies are weak sauce! It's almost unfair how easy they are to kill.

:smilelol5:

Re: Natalie Portman will slay Zombies in Jane Austen Film

Posted: Sat Dec 12, 2009 1:08 am
by Skiprr
Well, I can scratch one movie off my to-see list for 2010. That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

Now I have to get back to work. My first draft of Don Quixote: The Monster of La Mancha is due at my publisher by January 15, then I have to get to work on The Canterbury Ghost Tales. By the end of 2010 I have to write The Divine Comedy of Horrors and, one that I'm really looking forward to, David Copperfiend. All work and no play...

Re: Natalie Portman will slay Zombies in Jane Austen Film

Posted: Sat Dec 12, 2009 1:16 am
by The Annoyed Man
Skiprr wrote:Well, I can scratch one movie off my to-see list for 2010. That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

Now I have to get back to work. My first draft of Don Quixote: The Monster of La Mancha is due at my publisher by January 15, then I have to get to work on The Canterbury Ghost Tales. By the end of 2010 I have to write The Divine Comedy of Horrors and, one that I'm really looking forward to, David Copperfiend. All work and no play...
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! "rlol"

Re: Natalie Portman will slay Zombies in Jane Austen Film

Posted: Sat Dec 12, 2009 1:57 am
by Skiprr
The Annoyed Man wrote:AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! "rlol"
Yeah. I know. Not the line-up I had planned originally.

The publisher turned down my pitch for Moby Dick versus Godzilla, but maybe it was for the best. I could never come up with a good reason why Godzilla would leave Tokyo for the uninhabited middle of the Pacific Ocean, and I couldn't make a sympathetic character of even poor Ishmael in the treatment. Queequeg held promise, though. Sigh. Que sera...

I am thinking of pitching the ultimate literary hack/mash-up though: The Cliff Note Cannibals.

Whaddya think?

Re: Natalie Portman will slay Zombies in Jane Austen Film

Posted: Sat Dec 12, 2009 9:20 am
by The Annoyed Man
Skiprr wrote:[Whaddya think?
I think you and I have more in common that I realized. "rlol"

Re: Natalie Portman will slay Zombies in Jane Austen Film

Posted: Sat Dec 12, 2009 9:58 am
by surprise_i'm_armed
A gun-toting Natalie Portman....ooh!

I'm in love.

SIA

Re: Natalie Portman will slay Zombies in Jane Austen Film

Posted: Sat Dec 12, 2009 1:53 pm
by The Annoyed Man
AndyC wrote:Pride and Prejudice... and Zombies?

As much as I love zombies (heck, I asked for L4D 2 for Christmas), words fail me :totap:
...But your FAL won't fail you, and neither will my M1A. I think we're set for Zombie Day. But if you think that bringing a copy of Pride and Prejudice to the range for target practice will help, I'm your huckleberry. :mrgreen:

Re: Natalie Portman will slay Zombies in Jane Austen Film

Posted: Sat Dec 12, 2009 3:57 pm
by Skiprr
The Annoyed Man wrote:
Skiprr wrote:Whaddya think?
I think you and I have more in common that I realized.
Okay. Wait. Forgot the last idea. Now I think it should be a collaboration, you and me, with plenty of room for sequels: Cannibalistic Creatures of the Western Canon. Or maybe just, Canonical Cannibalistic Creatures (I can't seem to get past the alliteration).

Picture this:

Think time travel, a good-guy Rambo from 2040 who can rack up body counts faster than Stallone circa 1985, and an evil, mutant, zombie-virus-carrying vampire who is hell-bent on destroying the most important works of Western Literature by infecting all the people around the author in order to make sure the works are never created.

We'd be able to do period-piece, costume vignettes at will, dropping Rambo in with suitable revisionist one-man-army weaponry (think The Iliad with sword-and-sandle zombies and Rambo mowin' 'em down with a future variant of the M60 as he tries to get to the vampire virus-carrier; think of a real Grendel and our Rambo brushing aside Beowulf to take care of business with a .50 cal. and a katana; think of things out on the moors of Wuthering Heights that Bronte never imagined). The possibilities are endless: we can even throw Jane Austen under the bus again, but in person--so to speak--not just her novels.

Rambo never quite gets the ghoul, but he does win most battles. One set-piece could be about the greatest Italian poet no one ever heard of: Pietro Benedictus. Born as Petrarch was aging, the Sicilian Pietro would come to have a greater impact on the arts than virtually any other pre-Renaissance writer...had he lived.

Our zombie-virus vampire pops up in 1345 and infects convoys of merchants travelling the Mongol trade routes. The horrible infection slowly spreads, and in 1347 whole ship-loads of the infected wash up on the Sicilian coast, "aaarghing," ambling, and chewing their way across the island and onto the Italian mainland.

Poor Pietro and his entire family end up as zombie munchies...as do significant numbers in the European population. The zombie virus mutates by 1348; it remains a contagious killer, but ceases turning people into flesh eaters. History loses Pietro Benedictus to the great plague called...the Black Death.

It was the early, slow infection that caused Rambo to miss it, and it is his greatest defeat. Cinching his headband even tighter, Rambo focuses his steely resolve onto a single-minded objective...that no one--and no thing--can stop.

Next episode: all hell breaks loose at the first Pembroke production of The Comedy of Errors, and William Shakespeare learns to love a Glock.

I can do the voiceovers for the trailer: "In a world teaming with undead things that want to make you their own, only one man stands in their way..."

See what you started? I got a million of 'em, I tell ya; a million of 'em. :smilelol5:

Re: Natalie Portman will slay Zombies in Jane Austen Film

Posted: Sat Dec 12, 2009 4:41 pm
by LarryH
surprise_i'm_armed wrote:A gun-toting Natalie Portman....ooh!

I'm in love.

SIA
She handled a blaster pretty well, as Senator Amidala, in Star Wars (don't remember whether Episode II or III).

Re: Natalie Portman will slay Zombies in Jane Austen Film

Posted: Sat Dec 12, 2009 4:48 pm
by The Annoyed Man
Skiprr wrote:See what you started? I got a million of 'em, I tell ya; a million of 'em. :smilelol5:
"rlol" :lol: Oh man... You owe me a new monitor.... and a new pair of pants.

Howabout some revisionist Shelby Foote-like history tomes like Jefferson Davis and the War of Zombie Aggression, or Doris Kerns Goodwin's Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln and Vampire Slave-Traders?

I think we could also do an adaptation of a Shakespeare play, perhaps A Midsummer Night's Dream retold as A Nightmare on Elm Street in which the role of Puck is played by Robert Englund reprising his role as Freddy Krueger.

We're going to have to do beer and nachos some night together and work up a script. We could get rich. :mrgreen:

Re: Natalie Portman will slay Zombies in Jane Austen Film

Posted: Sat Dec 12, 2009 5:30 pm
by Mikel
My dreams have come true.

Re: Natalie Portman will slay Zombies in Jane Austen Film

Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2009 3:03 am
by Skiprr
Mikel wrote:My dreams have come true.
Thank you for your support, Mikel. Which script treatment do you like best?






Oh. You mean the Natalie Portman thing...

Re: Natalie Portman will slay Zombies in Jane Austen Film

Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2009 3:45 pm
by tarkus
psijac wrote:I am obsessed with zombies
I'm obsessed with Natalie Portman.
psijac wrote:Natalie Portman is set to slay the undead in a movie adaptation of best-seller Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, it is reported.
Image
:biggrinjester: