Sci-Fi Film and Television Developments

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

6/22/11 – Variety reported that Emma Stone has been offered the lead role in Lionsgate's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies with Craig Gillespie directing.  Seth Grahame-Smith is writing the script with Marti Noxon.  Natalie Portman, Annette Savitch, Richard Kelly, Ted Hamm and Sean McKittrick are producing through Portman's Handsomecharlie Films and Kelly's Darko Films.

4/18/11 - Lionsgate has hired Craig Gillespie to direct Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, according to The Hollywood Reporter.  Natalie Portman is producing the project under her handsomecharlie films shingle with Annette Savitch, who arranged for Darko Entertainment to acquire the rights from publisher Quirk Books. Darko’s Richard Kelly, Sean McKittrick and Ted Hamm also are serving as producers.  President of Motion Picture Production Alli Shearmur and Lionsgate Senior Vice President of Production Jim Miller are overseeing the project.  “We are so excited to have Craig Gillespie on board this film. his sensibility spans from genre bending horror to elegant character driven comedy, which is perfect for this movie. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is precisely the kind of movie I came to Lionsgate to make: sophisticated yet youthful and edgy.   Our movie will be all of those things – with zombies- and it will benefit enormously from Craig’s unique perspective,” Shearmur said in a statement.

11/15/10 – Variety reported that Mike White has signed on to direct Lionsgate's Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies, based on the offbeat novel by Seth Grahame-Smith.  Project mixes Jane Austen's 1813 classic novel "Pride and Prejudice," centering on Elizabeth Bennet's quest for love and independence amid the outbreak of a virus that turns the dead into zombies. Story's set in an alternate version of 19th Century England that features deadly ancestors roaming the countryside.  Austen was listed as the co-author with Grahame-Smith when the novel was published in April 2009 by Quirk Books.  Lionsgate acquired rights to "Zombies" last year. Project's also produced by Darko Entertainment.

12/11/09 - Natalie Portman will star and produce Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.  Portman will be teaming up with Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly to produce, according to Variety.  Portman will play the iconic heroine Elizabeth Bennet.

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