Remember Zombieland? How fresh and funny it was, but also scary and gory?
You know what network is most likely to screw that up if they tried to turn it into a network tv show? If you guessed Fox, then you win “Zombie kill of the week.”
The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed that Fox and SPT are in development on a half-hour comedy version of the 2009 feature from producer Gavin Polone, as first reported by Vulture.
The project would be written by feature scribes Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick and produced through feature distributor Columbia’s sibling unit, Sony Pictures Television with an eye on putting the project into development for the 2012-13 broadcast season. The feature film grossed $75.6 million, with a sequel in the works for next year. A potential TV series, Polone told the site, would replace a big-screen follow-up.
You know why this is a bad idea? Let me give you the top 10 reasons this should not happen:
1- Network TV will NEVER allow for the gore that Walking Dead has been able to get away with on AMC, much less the incredibly disturbing and adult subject matter. Do they really think this could work on primetime, following House or something? MAYBE on FX, but not on the regular network.
2- This is Fox. They will find a way to f@#! this up and dick over the fans.
3- This will be done in place of a proposed Zombieland sequel. Either give us a sequel or don’t, but none of this “TV show instead of a movie” crap.
4- Remember who we’re dealing with. This is Fox. They will find a way to f@#! this up and dick over the fans.
5- Budget cuts and casting. TV means no Jesse Eisenberg, no Woody Harrelson, no Emma Stone. DEFINITELY no Bill Murray. Which isn’t to say you couldn’t do a great tv show with some great actors (Tyler Labine is awesome yet somehow cursed to never be in a successful show), but I think people will be disappointed. And are they going to be able to deliver on amazing zombie kills every week with limited budget and limited amounts of blood they can show?
6- Name for me the successful tv shows that have been spun off of movies. I can think of only a couple (Buffy, MASH), and LOTS more that were big failures. Even take one which was a modest success which I was initially skeptical about (The Sarah Conner Chronicles). . . well, Fox cancelled it just as it was getting really good.
7- This is Fox. They will find a way to f@#! this up and dick over the fans.
8- This is Fox. They WILL find a way to f@#! this up and dick over the fans.
9- Horror comedy? On network TV? I mentioned Tyler Labine before– didn’t we try horror comedy before and it didn’t work when it was on the CW and called Reaper? (Not that the show wasn’t great– it just never found an audience). Even Buffy and Angel at their most popular probably didn’t get the audience Fox would want to make them want to commit to several seasons of a Zombieland show.
10- And finally, This is Fox. They will find a way to f@#! this up and dick over the fans.
Note that not ONE of those reasons has anything to do with the writing talents of Wernick and Reese. The ONLY thing that makes me think this might be good is that their names are attached to it and they might be able to make it happen. I believe that they can try to make something completely awesome– I just worry about the guys in suits around them who make all the decisions and the billion ways they could royally mess it up.
AMC has captured lightning in a bottle with Walking Dead, and I think they’re in danger of losing it because they also succumb to budget cuts and their top creative (Frank Darabont) walking away from the show. Walking Dead took risks. It kills off its protagonists faster than. . . .well, I think the apt comparison is faster than Robert Kirkman kills off main characters in The Walking Dead comic. I don’t see Fox having the “guts” to be able to pull this off, but I could be completely wrong.
What say the rest of you zombie robots?