The Walking Dead is the hottest show on TV, delivering first-rate, splattery gore effects on a weekly schedule. Meanwhile, the sleeper hit iZombie is making the undead sexy. And with a regular stream of zombie films, we've just about seen every shade on the spectrum in between. When the genre is so pervasive in the zeitgeist how do you do something people haven't seen before? With the upcoming horror comedy Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, director Christopher Landon is attempting that difficult feat by taking a completely zany, absurd approach to the genre. Alternating raunchy humor with visceral gory effects, Landon has set out to make a hard-R zombie comedy that doesn't pull any punches.
Last June, I spent a day on the set of Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse where I watched Landon direct his titular scouts, played by Tye Sheridan, Logan Miller and Joey Morgan, as they fended off a pack of rabid zombies at a strobe-lit, neon-gratified underground party. While there, I joined a few other journalists on camera to speak with Landon about why he wanted to direct the film, balancing story and set-pieces, and going all-out with the vulgar humor and gruesome gore. Check out what he had to say below.
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Christopher Landon:
- Talks about why he loved the script and wanted to make the movie.
- Gives the character breakdowns for the scouts.
- Talks about making the movie a hard-R.
- How is he doing something new and different with zombies?
- Talks balancing the coming of age story with the huge set-pieces.
Here’s the official Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse synopsis. Click here to read the 15 things I learned on set.
Three scouts and lifelong friends join forces with one badass cocktail waitress to become the world’s most unlikely team of heroes. When their peaceful town is ravaged by a zombie invasion, they’ll fight for the badge of a lifetime and put their scouting skills to the test to save mankind from the undead.
