Zombies and Aliens and Darcy, Oh my!

April 17, 2009 6:49 AM

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains."Jane Austen, who last year, along with her sisters, engaged in the deadly earnest fight against "unmentionables" in Seth Grahame-Smith's work, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, has sadly fallen prey once more, this time to aliens. Coming next year to a theater near you, from Elton John's Rocket Pictures.
posted by misha (39 comments total)

"It felt like a fresh and funny way to blow apart the done-to-death Jane Austen genre by literally dropping this alien into the middle of a costume drama, where he stalks and slashes to horrific effect," Furnish said.

Oh please oh please oh please do this well. Don't make it stupid. Please, just this once.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 6:59 AM on April 17 [1 favorite has favorites]

"Pride and Predator"

I could see someone doing a really good job with this, something with a tone somewhere around Shaun of the Dead, or maybe a bit more serious.
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 7:01 AM on April 17

He Is Only The Imposter: ""Pride and Predator"</i

The "stretched-out vagina" jokes write themselves.
posted by Joe Beese at 7:04 AM on April 17

As for Grahame-Smith, he reportedly has signed a princely deal for two more "historical" books. The first has no announced release date, though it does have a title: Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter.

Skinny guys fight 'til they're burger.
posted by steef at 7:06 AM on April 17 [2 favorites has favorites]

This could be very, very good indeed.
posted by Science! at 7:15 AM on April 17

I cannot wait for Seth Grahame-Smith and Kate Beaton to meet, court, and start having babies.
posted by piratebowling at 7:16 AM on April 17

Northanger Abbatoir

I must have heard about this somewhere recently but paid no attention, because I was half-asleep the other morning and thought "Austen with zombies. That would be cool as hell."

There are two truths universally acknowledged: that a young man in possession of a fortune must be in want of a wife and that our dead, once buried, remain so. The latter of these stood well the test of time until the summer of 18--, near ----------- County...
posted by jquinby at 7:16 AM on April 17 [2 favorites has favorites]

I'd dissimed this as a joke, not in a good way, until I read these quotes from a Guardian article:

The novel features Jane Austen's text interspersed with "all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem" from Grahame-Smith. So, for example, when Elizabeth is slighted by Mr Darcy at the ball – "she is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me" – the "warrior code" demands she "must avenge her honour ... She meant to follow this proud Mr Darcy outside and open his throat." She's thwarted, however, when a crowd of "unmentionables" pour into the ballroom, and she and her sisters are forced to draw their daggers. "Mr Darcy watched Elizabeth and her sisters work their way outward, beheading zombie after zombie. He knew of only one other woman in all of Great Britain who wielded a dagger with such skill, such grace and deadly accuracy."

... which actually makes it sound pretty cool.

And I keep thinking World War Z was far far better than I first expected.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:17 AM on April 17

Onion AV Club review
posted by spamguy at 7:29 AM on April 17

World War Z was incredible. You should listen to the audiobook, too.
posted by adamdschneider at 7:58 AM on April 17

I hope this can lead to a resurrection of Amazing Screw On Head.

"It's as I always say, all really intelligent people should be cremated for reasons of public safety"
posted by mrzarquon at 7:59 AM on April 17 [1 favorite has favorites]

I just got this the other day - its very well done and for the most part has seamless transitions between the Austen language and the zombie ninja bottles.

Also, I thought that after the first line of the book it might just get old, but its entertaining the whole way through.
posted by infinitefloatingbrains at 7:59 AM on April 17

Coming Soon to a theater near you:

Grave Expectations
Mess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twisted
Sixth Sense and Sensibility
Vanity Scare
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 8:18 AM on April 17 [4 favorites has favorites]

P&P&Z didn't work for me as much as I would've liked. The Onion review describes the book I wanted to read rather than the one I actually did. But I'm glad it's doing well, and I don't discourage people from giving it a shot.
posted by nev at 8:25 AM on April 17

Art is born of constraint and dies of freedom. - Andre Gide
posted by Danf at 8:36 AM on April 17 [2 favorites has favorites]

Dr.Who already did this.
posted by srboisvert at 8:39 AM on April 17 [1 favorite has favorites]

Ungh. This is why the Kindle is dangerous. All it takes now for me to buy a book is a review along the lines of "It isn't as bad as I thought it would be."
posted by robocop is bleeding at 9:00 AM on April 17

It sounds like the book equivalent of Snakes on a Plane. And I don't mean that in a good way. From the New Yorker review:

The experience of reading it is like taking a walk in a park on a beautiful day and knowing that a thunderstorm or something else deeply unpleasant (say, a zombie) might spring up at any moment and ruin everything. In this instance, the something unpleasant is Grahame-Smith’s writing.

posted by athenian at 9:13 AM on April 17

It was the best of times, it was a carnival of viscera; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of ghoulish, insatiable hunger; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of flash mob lobotomies; it was the season of light, it was the season of the necrotic erotic abattoir boudoir; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter without pity or remorse; we had everything before us, we had humanity dripping from our lips; we were all going directly to Hell, and we were paving the road with the entrails of our fathers.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 9:32 AM on April 17 [11 favorites has favorites]

Sorry - thought this was the Bush/Cheney torture memo thread.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 9:34 AM on April 17 [1 favorite has favorites]

The concept actually sounds really boring to me. Take a boring book and interleave zombie scenes? How does that make it interesting. It's funny like how saying "Bacon!" a lot is funny. In other words: Not.
posted by delmoi at 9:37 AM on April 17

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of bacon.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 9:40 AM on April 17 [2 favorites has favorites]

It was the best of bacon, it was... damn, that's good bacon!
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 9:41 AM on April 17 [1 favorite has favorites]

Bacon...flung at you by undead ninjas and pirates.
posted by jquinby at 9:49 AM on April 17

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of cheese grits on which strips of bacon lay crossed.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 9:57 AM on April 17 [3 favorites has favorites]

Bacon.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 10:01 AM on April 17

Zombies and aliens, huh. Well. Somebody had to do something to get the kids to read that boring tripe becuase my all monkey cast and anal-porn version was going no where.

My wife does this funny synopsis of Austen completely reflexively when ever it's brought up becuase she says she has PTSD from being forced to read it.

It usually goes something like:

Random Person at Cocktail Party: "...Keira Knightley was so surprising in her role as Elizabeth Bennet that..."

My Wife: "MISTAH DARCY!"

Random Person at Cocktail Party: "Wha? ...as I was sssaying Austen wa..."

My Wife: "Mister Darcy? Mister Darcy, Mister Darcy, Mister Darcy. Darcy? Mistah? MISSS-TAH DAH-CEEE!"

Random Person at Cocktail Party: "Hah. Yes the character was a bit consumed with repetition of..."

My Wife: "MISSSSSSS-TAHHHHH DAHHHH-CEEEEEEEEEEE!"
posted by tkchrist at 10:20 AM on April 17 [11 favorites has favorites]

Oh my word, Florence, you are brilliant and I am intoxicated.
posted by kittyprecious at 10:23 AM on April 17

Pride and Prejudice + Frankenstein = Pride and Prometheus (audio and text available for free, there, though they could have made it more obvious how to get at the text.)
posted by Zed at 11:36 AM on April 17

MIS-TAH DAH-CEE? MISSS-TAH DAH-CEEE!

Kill me, I'm infected!
posted by steef at 11:48 AM on April 17

tkchrist's wife sounds like what Austen Zombies should sound like.
posted by ooga_booga at 12:17 PM on April 17 [1 favorite has favorites]

Merchant Ivory Terminator
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:41 PM on April 17

Having placed in my mouth sufficient brains for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my hands from the steaming entrails of my victim and retired into the privacy of what was left of my mind, my remaining eye and rotting face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression.
posted by Ndwright at 12:52 PM on April 17

I hope this can lead to a resurrection of Amazing Screw On Head.

I was thinking the same thing. Must have watched that pilot 10 times and it was still great.

Damn you Emperor Zombiiiiieeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!
posted by EndsOfInvention at 1:03 PM on April 17

Huh. Five minutes ago I ripped open an Amazon package with my copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies in it.
posted by eyeballkid at 2:09 PM on April 17

You know how you read an Onion headline, and it makes you laugh out loud because it's conceptually clever?, but then there's this twenty paragraph faux news article attached that you start reflexively slogging through, but you're not laughing anymore, and, in fact, it's actually just kind of killing the humor of the headline for you, in the way that explaining a joke kills a joke?

Well that's how I feel about an entire book being written and published about what I would guess originated as a fairly amusing, but utterly disposable, Photoshop sight gag from a Something Awful or Worth 1000 thread.
posted by dgaicun at 2:48 PM on April 17

I can't believe someone is financing this--it must be a zombie fan with more pride than sense.
posted by Decimask at 4:58 PM on April 17

I ordered this for my girlfriend when I first heard about it, and she quite enjoyed it.

It has ninjas too, apparently, in case some of you needed just that little extra incentive.
posted by rifflesby at 9:50 PM on April 17

Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter

In Abe we trust
posted by ODiV at 1:42 AM on April 18