Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick had a massive hit with ‘Zombieland’ and did well at the box office with ‘Zombieland: Double Tap.’ Their one major regret is that their ‘Zombieland’ television show with Amazon Studios was never ordered to series by the streaming service. The pilot was released back in April of 2013 at a time when the platform allowed users to vote on which shows would progress into production.
‘Zombieland’ didn’t make the cut. Between production value and the main characters being recast, there just wasn’t an audience who wanted to see the show.
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While talking about ‘Zombieland: Double Tap’, Reese also weighed in on the scrubbed Amazon show:
“I think there’s a little tiny bit of cross-pollination [between the show and Zombieland: Double Tap] but not as much as you’d think. We didn’t want to borrow from something that’d already been shot. That actually aired on Amazon for a couple of months, so people had already seen it, so we didn’t want to borrow too heavily have one borrowing from the other. That said, it all comes from the same hopper of ideas like we applied the same tone and jokes and all that stuff to that television show.”
As the film was produced on a $48 million production budget and earned over $121.77 million worldwide at the box office, it wasn’t quite the box office success that the original was. Still, it was by no means a flop.
With so many films being transitioned to television these days, there is always a chance that another streaming network could breathe fresh life into the franchise. Only, if it were to happen, you can guess that we wouldn’t be following the cinematic leading characters and that the production team would be wise enough not to attempt to recast them.
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There is plenty of ‘Zombieland,’ which remains unexplored and is fertile ground for a continued story to be told. Who knows? Previously director Reuben Fleischer shared that he would love to do a spinoff ‘Zombieland’ movie with Zoey Deutch’s Madison which could be ripe for being turned into an ongoing show.
Would you have wanted to see the Amazon ‘Zombieland’ television series to move forward? Would you be open to a different series set in the same world? Could a Madison-themed show work, or would you prefer entirely new characters? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Source: LRM Online
