Sci-Fi Storm

A couple of movie news items while I’m in the tech week of helping produce a school musical…

Zoey Deutch (Set It Up) will join the cast of Zombieland 2, which will feature all the original stars – Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, and Abigail Breslin. The followup, to be released about 10 years after the original in October 2019, will follow the survivors through both the White House and the Heartland while dealing with evolved zombies and other survivors. Just remember – double tap.

Sony, in the meantime, is hoping that Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse will help launch a female-centric animated hero franchise and is developing Spider-Women, to focus on three female Spider-powered heroes, one of which might be Spider-Gwen who will be featured in the highly-anticipated movie releasing next month. Bek Smith (Zoo) is tagged to write the script. Spider-Man: Homecoming and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse‘s Amy Pascal will produce.

Some more casting news this week: Rachelle Lefevre (Twilight) is joining the cast of Under The Dome from Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment and Stephen King, based on a novel by King. She will play Julia, who recently moved from Chicago to Chester’s Mill with her husband and is an investigative journalist.

Amazon Studios has added Kirk Ward (Forrest Gump, The Island) to its pilot for Zombieland, based on the movie. Zombieland is among several projects from Amazon that hopes to break the network broadcast model of television, along with competitors Netflix, Hulu and others that are trying the direct sales/download model.

Amazon appears to be working deals right now for several pilots to turn into series for its streaming video service, but there is apparently one series they are talking about going straight to series – Zombieland, which was a movie in 2009.

What is interesting is that it was originally envisioned as a TV series as early as 2005, developed for CBS. CBS passed on it as did Syfy, so it was redeveloped into a movie starring Woody Harrelson, Jesse “I’m not Zuckerberg” Eisenberg, Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin and is known for providing all the rules you need for surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (remember, Double Tap!) Most recently, Fox was interested in it as a half-hour comedy.

Sony Picture TV is the studio, and original writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick are on board to write and co-executive produce, and original producer Gavin Polone would executive produce.