Interview

Zombieland is easily the best film I've seen all year, in any genre.  Though it hasn't even been released theatrically yet, I myself am already hungry for the DVD and a long line of sequels.  Trust me – when you see the film, you will be too. 

Today I spoke with Zombieland writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, who both loved the idea of a sequel, which is right now dependent on the studio and the movie's performance – not the cast.

"The cast is very open to a sequel," Paul tells us.  "When we wrapped the last shot of the film, Woody [Harrelson] gave me a big hug and said, ‘I've never, ever wanted to shoot a sequel after wrap, until this one.  I would adore a sequel.'"  While no script exists, plenty of ideas do: the film was originally conceived as a TV series, so the duo have a brainstorming file loaded with dozens of different scenarios.  "It would probably still be a road movie, to a certain degree," Rhett offers.  "Having the heroes holed up somewhere gets too claustrophobic and is too reminiscent of Dawn of the Dead."  Paul has a request from producer Gavin Polone, who was not fond of shooting in a rare Georgia cold snap: "Let's make it Zombies of the Caribbean."  A sequel will definitely have more "Zombie Kill of the Week" segments.

The pair already know there will be plenty of fun extras on the DVD.  Sadly, the piano-crushing scene was the only "Zombie Kill of the Week" filmed, so don't look for more of those.  Instead, you can expect a lot of scenes that further flesh out characters and conflicts.  Another entire character was included in the original cut – you may or may not see him/her on the DVD: "We really liked that character and we may want to use them in the sequel."  Yup, couldn't even scare a pronoun out of them.

Zombieland has a fantastic cameo role, and the writers actually re-wrote that segment of the movie for each of the dozen or so major names they sent the script to.  When I brought up the idea of putting all those different cameo scripts onto the DVD, Reese was receptive.  "Maybe.  That's a fascinating idea.  I haven't seen a lot of script pages on DVDs before, but it would be cool for people to see that."  You heard it here first: if you see those script pages on the DVD, it was all my idea.

Be sure to check back next week for our full conversation with Reese and Wernick.