While talk of a “Zombieland 2” has been tossed around for a while now, it looks like the franchise will continue on the small screen instead. Vulture reports that writers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese have developed a half-hour TV version of the movie. Moreover, this isn’t some pie-in-the-sky project, as talks are underway with Fox and Sony Pictures Television to bring it to the airwaves for the 2012-3 season. If this seems like a smaller-scaled compromise versus getting a new movie in front of cameras, guess again, as apparently this project was first conceived as a TV series years ago.
“The original plan for this was to make it as a TV show,” producer Gavin Polone told Vulture. It was set up over at CBS in 2005 but of course, “they did what networks do, which is to take all the good stuff out.” The idea was tossed over to SyFy who were unable to find a workable budget, but everything worked out in the end, as the 2009 movie was made and became a smash hit. But even in the big screen adventure, there were kernels of the television incarnation present.
“If you watch the movie with that in mind, you will see some remnants of the television show. We have the ‘Zombie Kill of the Week,’ which was always intended to happen every week. The movie ends on a cliffhanger; it doesn’t have a real resolution,” Reese told MTV earlier this years. “[The movie’s ending] is just our guys driving off into the sunset for some new adventures. That’s because that’s how the television pilot ended.”
