When director Ruben Fleischer’s 2009 film Zombieland turned out to be a huge hit, talk immediately turned to a prospective sequel for the comedy. Producers weren’t exactly lacking for ideas for the follow-up, since Zombieland was originally envisioned as a weekly TV series before it was reimagined as a feature film. While Fleischer recently told us that the chances of Zombieland 2 coming to fruition are very slim, it now appears that the TV show might be coming back from the dead. Reports surfaced in late 2011 that CBS was mulling over a Zombieland TV series, and now some casting calls for the show have leaked online that appear to confirm that the show is indeed in development. Hit the jump for story and character details on Zombieland 2.0.
The folks over at io9 got their hands on some pages of the pilot script that are being used for casting calls, and they reveal a slightly different take on the characters originally played by Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, and Abigail Breslin in the film. It’s unknown if Zombieland writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick also penned the script for this pilot, and it’s also entirely possible that the characters in the finished pilot (or even series) end up to be wildly different from these descriptions.
That said, the current breakdowns describe Tallahasse (Harrelson) as still a bit of a “snarky weirdo,” but the TV iteration of the character has a more genial relationship with Columbus (Eisenberg) than he does in the film. The pilot story finds Columbus tracking down his grandma and grandpa, only to find that they’ve already been turned. He is also still after the heart of Wichita (Stone), who is revealed to have run away from her father after he had her steal other people’s Christmas presents (ah, so that’s where the con man aspect of her character comes from).
Witchita is also still taking on a maternal role with regards to Little Rock (Breslin), trying to teach her math and such in the post-apocalyptic world. Little Rock doesn't appear to do much in the pilot, but we do apparently learn a bit more about her relationship with her father as well. There are also two characters named Fred and Ainsley who are office workers that complain about “first world problems” while horrifically graphic zombie kills are taking place right behind them.
Again, these character breakdowns could end up being wildly different if and when the pilot ever does make it to production. For now, though, it’s definitely interesting to see that the Zombieland TV show might be back in play.
