Who’s ready to see Elizabeth (Lily James), Lydia (Ellie Bamber), Mary (Millie Brady), Jane (Bella Heathcote), and Kitty Bennet (Suki Waterhouse) take on some “unmentionables?”  Burr Steers’ book to film adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is currently in production and EW’s got our very first look at the sisters wielding swords and daggers.

Hit the jump to take a look at the new Pride and Prejudice and Zombies image.  The film is expected to hit theaters next year and also stars Lena Headey, Charles Dance, Matt Smith, Douglas Booth, Jack Huston and Sam Riley.

This big screen rendition of Grahame-Smith’s book has been kicking around for a while and at one point, David O. Russell penned a script and made plans to direct as well.  However, that never panned out and Steers took over instead, rewriting Russell’s script while making “realism” a top priority.  Here’s what he told EW:

“The first thing I did was reinsert all the Pride and Prejudice beats.”

Steers also gave the roles of Mr. Darcy (Sam Riley) and Mr. Wickham (Jack Huston) a boost, but it’s the Bennet sisters who’ll be front and center.  Here’s what James had to say about portraying Elizabeth Bennet, the second eldest who’s deeply dedicated to her family and her training in the “dark arts:”

“Even in the original story, Elizabeth’s a fighter and beyond her contemporaries in her ambitions and her ideas of women.  She’s a badass warrior.  She’s a ninja.”

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Image via Screen Gems

Here’s the Amazon description of the book:

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.” So begins Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an expanded edition of the beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy.

What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Can she vanquish the spawn of Satan? And overcome the social prejudices of the class-conscious landed gentry?

 

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