Zombieland: Double Tap has had a long journey from script to screen. Which is ironic, because it took Sony no time to greenlight the follow-up to 2009’s Zombieland.
The box office figures for the zombie comedy’s opening night were so impressive that writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick were actually hired within a week of its release. But while they initially wrote a sequel set immediately after the events of the original, they couldn’t get the script quite right. Then Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Woody Harrelson and Abigail Breslin became immensely popular, acquiring six Oscar nominations between them since Zombieland’s release, while Stone actually won the Best Actress gong for La La Land, too.
“Everytime they won Oscars or were nominated we just thought, ‘We’re dead. We’re never getting them back together,’” co-writer Paul Wernick tells Metro. Ultimately, though, he believes their love for Zombieland, and the fact that everyone involved had such a great time working on it, convinced them to return.
Wernick is well aware just how “crazy” it is that they found time in Eisenberg, Harrelson, Stone and Bresln’s hectic schedules, though. “These are some of the finest actors of our generation and they’re doing a zombie movie. Not only a zombie movie, they’re doing a sequel to a zombie movie.”
Ruben Fleischer, who made his directorial debut with Zombieland but has since followed it up with 30 Minutes Or Less, Gangster Squad and Venom, insists that all four of the actors had to return “in order for” Wernick, his writing partner Rhett Reese, and the filmmaker himself “to pursue” the sequel, as “it wouldn’t have been the same without them.”
Ultimately, they landed on the story revolving around Breslin’s Little Rock running away with a hippie to a safe haven on the other side of the country. Tallahassee, Columbus and Wichita soon set off to find her, but their task becomes particularly perilous when it is revealed that the zombies have now evolved and are even more dangerous.
Not only was Fleischer excited to return to the non-traditional and rule-breaking style that made the original so appealing, he also wanted to play with the visuals of a post apocalyptic world ten years in the future. “I wanted to really portray a world where nature had come back. The White House is covered in vines, roads are covered in weeds. That was really cool to design. I also wanted to create some really action sequences.”
The most impressive of these is a prolonged fight at an Elvis themed hotel, and after his work on Venom Fleischer was much more confident and knowledgable about how and where to subtly incorporate visual effects. Fleischer was particularly thrilled to work with and add to the beloved foursome, too.
“My biggest self imposed rule with this was about making sure the cast was just as amazing as it could be,” he explains. “Part of what works so well is how distinctive each of the comedic voices are.”
“Jesse is neurotic, his energy is so different to Woody’s cowboy spirit. Emma’s super sarcastic Wichita couldn’t be more different to Zoey Deutch’s Madison, who is really earnest, naive and has real puppy dog energy. That is a great counterbalance.”
While it is great to see Eisenberg, Harrelson, Stone and Breslin working their magic again, Deutch steals every scene she is in as the dim-witted survivor that they meet in a mall.
“Zoey came in guns blazing,” says Fleishcer. “Even though this is a pretty intimidating cast to come into, she blew everyone’s minds with how funny she was.”
But while Reese expects Double Tap to provide ample laughs and scares, he wants viewers to “feel like they are putting back on a warm comfy sweater when return to this world.” Because, for him, Wernick and Fleischer, both Zombieland and Double Tap are “about family more than anything.”
“While we want scares and we want laughs, we want people to feel. People should want to spend time with these characters. We wanted to recapture their interactions with each other, the chemistry, and find that fine line between giving people what they loved before but also giving new stuff so we weren’t treading on old ground.”
You can see if they achieve just that when Zombieland: Double Tap is released on October 18.
