Marti Noxon Talks Trouble, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Steve Barton   |  

Nov 22, 2011

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Thus far just about everything has gone wrong concerning the big screen adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It’s like the revolving door of productions. Names get attached. Names leave. Directors jump ship. Actors refuse offers. It’s a perfect storm. Writer Marti Noxon recently issued her thoughts on this ever so troubled production.

So what’s the deal?

“I really can’t say because my experience with Lionsgate was always great,” Noxon told Movies.com. “They are committed to doing it and really smart and my experience with Craig [Gillespie] was, again, great. Everybody seemed very pleased with where the script ended up, so it’s really a little baffling. I would say it probably, in my suspicions, has to do with the marketplace.”

Noxon adds, “It’s very hard to sell a comedy-horror concept. As much as it’s already pre-sold and popular much in the same way ‘Fright Night’ was, it’s still a little risky. At the same time, you get a success like ‘Zombieland’, but then something will come along that makes people nervous again, so I feel like there’s a little bit of that problem, particularly on the casting side. It’s hard to find an actress who is super hot because they might not be inclined to take a risk on something that has a 70 / 30% chance of working, you know? I think it’s more to do with the marketplace than the logistics of the actual project.”

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies will be directed by someone eventually (or not) from a script by Marti Noxon based on the novel by Seth Grahame-Smith. It centers on Elizabeth Bennet’s quest for love and independence amid the outbreak of a virus that turns the dead into zombies. The story’s set in an alternate version of 19th Century England that features deadly ancestors roaming the countryside.

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