Wednesday, February 3, 2016

[IGH] At The Movies: Review of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

If you were going to come up with the most ridiculous premise for a big-budget Hollywood film, you’d be hard-pressed to come up with a better one than Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.  Although the title sounds like it came from a round of Cards Against Humanity, the story has a surprisingly solid premise and makes for a fun and unique movie experience.

You’ve probably heard of the literary classic Pride & Prejudice. Originally published more than two hundred years ago in 1813, Jane Austen's beloved classic novel tells the story of Elizabeth Bennet as she struggles with the societal expectations put upon her in 19th century England. So how in the world do we go from navigating social customs of differing classes to zombie apocalypse?  It actually all comes back to that fantastic title.

Jason Rekulak, the publisher of Quirk Books, was working on parody ideas by combining classic pop-culture character troupes (Ninjas, Pirates, Zombies) with literary classics whose rights are in public domain. When he stumbled across the idea of “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” the idea stuck and he shared it with writer Seth Grahame-Smith. Seth took the original work and created an alternate reality where he could incorporate not only the zombie apocalypse, but a heavy infusion of Asian martial arts and weaponry.