AMC to bring The Walking Dead to TV
Posted Aug 12th 2009 3:10PM by Annie Wu
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Industry, OpEd, Reality-Free

Now that the world's collective pre-teen subconscious has been thoroughly distracted by vampires with glittering skin or charming Southern accents, AMC is sneakily bringing back some zombie love. According to Variety, the comic series created by writer Robert Kirkman and illustrator Tony Moore, The Walking Dead, is coming to AMC. Bonus: Frank Darabont will be writing and directing.

It's about time! Let's give the blood suckers a break and revisit some good ol' brain eaters, shall we?

Stories about people struggling to survive after a massive zombie apocalypse can easily feel like the furious notebook scribblings of a high school boy, but The Walking Dead series has a lot more emphasis on drama than shocking scares or free-for-all ass-kicking, which should translate well into a television show. It will also be interesting to see how the visuals actually turn out, since the whole comic is done in really strong black, white and grey. Heck, maybe they'll even keep it stark and colorless (probably just my artsy-fartsy wishful thinking).

Interestingly enough my son sent me this link just this mornin'

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/zombies/

Posted by: Phrosty | 08/14/09 | 5:50 pm

Is this data aimed at slow-moving or fast-moving zombies?

What are your chances of surviving a ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE? 71%

How well would you do? =^[.]^=

Looks like I did pretty well....and I answered honestly

<span style="display: block;">75%</span><p>Created by OnePlusYou - Free Dating Site</p>

So do you think THE WALKING DEAD will be as graphic as all those many zombie movies???
I am hoping it is; a sanitized version won't work too well on those of us who are used to seeing zombies munch on organs OVER & OVER AGAIN (and let's not forget the brains!!!).
KR

In honor of the D*C zombies . . .

So do you think THE WALKING DEAD will be as graphic as all those many zombie movies???
I am hoping it is; a sanitized version won't work too well on those of us who are used to seeing zombies munch on organs OVER & OVER AGAIN (and let's not forget the brains!!!).
KR

'Zombieland' not your standard brain-eating fare

By Alan Duke
CNN

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Like all zombie movies, "Zombieland" has hundreds of zombies doing awful things, such as attacking and eating humans, but you could argue it's not a zombie movie.

Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson find themselves battling the undead in "Zombieland."

Zombie hordes do chase the main characters in a post-apocalyptic world, but the focus is on the comedy's stars, including two Oscar nominees -- Woody Harrelson and Abigail Breslin -- along with Jesse Eisenberg and Emma Stone.

(Spoiler alert: A third Oscar nominee makes a remarkable cameo appearance, but this story will avoid spoiling the surprise by naming him.)

"We wanted to make a cool, kick-ass road movie about a dysfunctional family traveling across the country and zombies provide us the antagonists, the threat that our characters need to come together," said Paul Wernick, who wrote the screenplay with partner Rhett Reese.

In fact, Wernick had only seen one zombie film before writing this script. Reese, who is a fan of the genre, kept the story on a track that would feed zombie fans' hunger for blood-and-guts action.

"[The] zombie genre is so well traveled, there is really no reason to get into it unless we could do it in a fresh, different way," Reese said. "We were almost forced to think outside the box to make it an entertaining zombie movie."

"Zombieland" is set in the United States months after a fast-moving virus begins turning most people into flesh-eating zombies. A handful of survivors come together to fight back.

Wernick and Reese literally rewrote the rules for zombie films in this movie. Eisenberg's character is an obsessive-compulsive man who developed 47 rules -- such as "fasten your seat belt" -- designed to help him survive in Zombieland.

While Eisenberg journeys to find his parents, he joins Harrelson, a zombie killer who is searching for the last Hostess Twinkie before its expiration date.

Stone and Breslin play sisters who survive on their con artist skills. Their goal is to reach a California amusement park, which they think could be free of zombies.

The cross-country trip these four characters share resembles "National Lampoon's Vacation" -- if written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Video Watch the stars of the film talk about zombie fans »

Wernick said they wanted to be "very freewheeling."

The movie "gives the audience the thrill of the journey," he said. "We wanted to take some wild turns."

"The rules that we lived by when writing this is in fact that there are no rules," he said.

"Zombieland" may be to zombies what Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" is to Nazis.

Wernick and Reese, who have been close friends since high school, often finish each other's sentences as if they were an old married couple.

"When we were trying to get 'Zombieland' off the ground back in the early days, we ..." Wernick said.

"... assaulted Tarantino at an awards show, to try to get him to read the script," Reese said.

"That didn't work out," Wernick said in conclusion to their joint thought. "He thought we were zombies coming after him."

"Zombieland," directed by Rubin Fleischer, offers many of the same elements as a Tarantino film.

"[Tarantino] is all about dialogue, character, irreverence, pop culture and we love all those things over the years," Reese said. "We have always been inspired by him."

The writers had to run through a number of actors before finding the person for the 10-minute cameo. Among them was Patrick Swayze, the writers' first choice. Swayze, who died just two weeks before the movie's release, turned down the role because of ill health earlier this year.
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Also asked: Joe Pesci, Steven Seagal, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Matthew McConaughey, Mark Hamill, Kevin Bacon and Sylvester Stallone. They were asked, but either didn't want the role or were not available, according to Wernick and Reese.

With just a few days before filming the scenes, they asked Harrelson to look in his cell phone for names and numbers. He came up with a man who's been an Oscar nominee and Emmy winner. And now, he's got a key role in a zombie film.

Fla. college ready for flesh-eating zombie attack
AP

Thu Oct 1, 9:00 pm ET

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – No one expects a zombie apocalypse. But the University of Florida is making sure officials are ready for a night of the living dead, just in case.

The school has a plan for responding to the undead on its Web site among outlines for dealing with hurricanes and pandemics.

The exercise lays out how university officials would respond to attacks by "flesh-eating, apparently life impaired individuals." It notes that a zombie outbreak might include "documentation of lots of strange moaning."

A University of Florida spokesman says the exercise was written by an employee to "add a little bit of levity" to disaster preparation discussions.

Creature Feature - Aim For The Head Lyrics

Can I Pose A Question
How Do You Kill What Is Dead
I Just Shoot From The Hip
And Aim For The Head

He Used To Be Your Friend
That Was Another Life
With This Single Bullet
We're Gonna Blow His Mind

With A Loaded Gun
And A Steady Hand
We Just Might Live Through This

Aim For The Head

If You Kill the Brain
Then You Kill The Ghoul
And It's Motor Fuctions

Aim For The Head

Nail Up All The Windows
They've Come To Settle A Score
Make Sure No Chamber Is Bare
They're Right Outside The Door

This Is A Test Of Your Strength
And Your Will To Survive
If You Give Up Now
They're Going To Eat You Alive

With A Loaded Gun
And A Steady Hand
We Just Might Live Through This

Aim For The Head

If You Kill the Brain
Then You Kill The Ghoul
And It's Motor Fuctions

Aim For The Head

Listen To Me
Listen To Me
Listen To Me
Save Yourself

There Is No More
There Is No More
There Is No More
Room In Hell

I Will Help You
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I Will Help You
Understand

Come With Me Now
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Come With Me Now
Take My Hand

We Can Make It
We Can Make It
We Can Make it
Through This

With A Loaded Gun
And A Steady Hand
We Just Might Live Through This

Aim For The Head

If You Kill the Brain
Then You Kill The Ghoul
And It's Motor Fuctions

Aim For The Head

Is This The End Of The World
Or Just The Start Of The Fight
You Better Heed My Warning
And Watch Out For Their Bite

They Have A Taste For Your Flesh
And For Your Blood They Will Crave
They Are Coming For Us
From Beyond The Grave

What are your chances of surviving a ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE?

<span style="display: block;">71%</span><p>

How well would you do? =^[.]^=

New Romero zombie flick (WARNING: GRAPHIC ZOMBIE VIOLENCE!)
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Ifo7fNnm7EE&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Ifo7fNnm7EE&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

I gotta see this one! =^[.]^=

As a general rule, space zombies tend to be more energetic than their terrestrial counterparts, and often retain a robust intelligence. Some use language, advanced tools, and exhibit rudimentary culture.

But as you'll learn in the 20th of our 31 specials for the 31 days of Halloween, where it counts, space zombies have true zombie nature: a violently anti-human bent, an avidity for tasty human flesh and rapid expansion of their numbers through infection or otherwise turning of their victims.

Remember to come back tomorrow at noon to attend some killer movie proms.

A Brief History Of Zombies
James Turner, 10.30.09, 06:00 AM EDT
The sci-fi undead are personifications of technology gone horribly wrong.

The atomic bombs that dropped on Japan in 1945 inspired movie director Ishiro Honda to give the world the big, bad, grey monster, born of irresponsible nuclear weapons tests that we know to this day as Godzilla. Godzilla was, quite literally, the personification of humanity's science and technology gone bad. The message was simple: With atomic weapons, we had unleashed a monster that was beyond our ability to control.

In the West, Godzilla's cautionary tale (and tail) never really took hold. To Americans, Godzilla was just a guy in a rubber suit stepping on model houses. But that's not to say that the West hasn't had its own cinematic symbol of science run amuck. Instead of giant irradiated monsters, our preferred poison has been flesh-eating zombies.

Until George Romero's landmark 1968 film, Night of the Living Dead, zombies in movies usually were created from voodoo or magic (or aliens, as featured in Ed Wood's groundbreakingly awful Plan 9 From Outer Space.) Romero gave us brain-munching corpses produced from a space probe blowing up in the atmosphere. Once again, the monsters were created by our out-of-control technology.

Night of the Living Dead didn't spawn an immediate clutch of imitators, possibly because it came in the midst of America's race to the moon and most people were hopeful about advances in science. But when Romero returned with Dawn of the Dead in 1978, that optimism had already begun to fade. By 1984's C.H.U.D., disasters such as Three Mile Island had primed the movie-going public for the idea of a horde of killer zombies created by nuclear waste.

Along with nuclear waste and mysterious space-borne radiation, pandemic plagues have also spawned zombies. This zombie type has become the dominant movie form over the last few decades, no doubt a reaction to AIDS, Ebola, cloning, genetically modified foods and the remainder of the brave new world of biotechnology.

It seems you can't throw a half-eaten cerebrum these days without hitting a posse of zombies brought to life by some kind of biological mishap (28 Days Later, Resident Evil, Planet Terror, Quarantine). Like Godzilla, zombies keep up with the times, always ready to mirror whatever aspect of science and technology people feel most uncertain about at the moment.

But there's one major difference between Godzilla and the attack of the zombies: Godzilla fought scientists and the military (and maybe the occasional band of adorable children), but zombie battles usually are a person-to-ex-person struggle. While Godzilla swatted at planes and crushed tanks underfoot, zombies are done in by weapons such as shotguns, hand grenades and the ever-handy chainsaw.

Americans must like the idea that, as out of control as our hubristic science might become, a good machete and a 12 gauge in the hands of a competent man or woman can always save the day. The 2003 bestselling title, The Zombie Survival Guide, offers the same message of self-reliance. (I'm not sure what lesson we can take from the success of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.)

To be sure, it's easy to read more into the popularity of zombies than might actually be there. Film-goers have always loved a good scare, and a shambling collection of neuron-challenged corpses make a pretty terrifying story. And if my zombie-obsessed 14-year-old son is a representative sample, blowing the undead away with heavy weaponry has a solid adolescent demographic appeal. But there's no question, at least in my mind, that zombies (and Godzilla) are an allegorical representation of our fear that science and the technologies it spawn will lead to our destruction.

Who knows what the future may hold for zombie evolution? But it's a pretty good bet that whatever we're uncomfortable with at the moment stands a good chance of turning into the next zombie-generator. Blackberry-spawned abominations, anyone? Dawn of the Single-Payer Healthcare Undead? What about, They Came From H1N1?

James Turner is a contributing editor to O'Reilly Media.