ZOMBIES ON THE LOOSE
By CRAIG WILSON
April 12, 2009
Zombies are everywhere.
There are books galore, movies in the works, perhaps a Broadway play. There's even a zombie march in Cambridge, Mass., at noon this Sunday.(In recent months, there have even been zombie marches in Asbury Park, NJ, and zombie pub crawls in New Brunswick, NJ.)
Not since George Romero's seminal bloodfest Night of the Living Dead has so much flesh been munched by so many reanimated corpses.
"Other monsters may threaten individual humans, but the living dead threaten the entire human race," says Max Brooks, author of the 2003 best seller The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection From the Living Dead, of the undead's popularity. "Zombies are slate wipers."
This fall, Three Rivers Press will release a novel version of Brooks' guide, and a major movie version of Brooks' second foray into zombie lit, World War Z, is in preproduction at Paramount.
Seth Grahame-Smith, author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies written with Jane Austen (Quirk Books, $12.95), a book best described as Mr. Darcy meets Dawn of the Dead, says zombies connect because they're lovable menaces, funny, and easy metaphors.
"They've always been used to skewer the ills of society," he says. "It's not surprising they're making a comeback in these intense times."
They're not just for grown-ups.
The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan (Delacorte Press for Young Readers, $16.95) is a tale of teen angst in a post-apocalyptic world. There's also Zombie Queen of Newbury High by Amanda Ashby (Speak) and You Are So Undead to Me by Stacey Jay (Razorbill), both in stores, and Strange Angels by Lili St. Crow (Razorbill), on sale May 14.
"In the world of traditional horror, nothing is more popular right now than zombies," says Katy Hershberger of St. Martin's Press, which is coming out next winter with an all-original zombie anthology. "The living dead are here to stay."
ZOMBIE HORDES ARE EVERYWHERE!
There's no stopping the zombie invasion:
On screen: Diablo Cody (Juno) will produce the movie version for Fox Searchlight (Slumdog Millionaire's distributor) of S. G. Browne's just-released novel Breathers: A Zombie's Lament (Broadway Books, $14). It's about a support group of zombies who rage against Breathers, aka "the living."
On stage: Zombies might be taking center stage, too. Producers have acquired the rights to bring Michael Jackson's Thriller (complete with dancing undead) to the Broadway stage.
Massachusetts | Broadway | Cambridge | Paramount | Pride | Night | Dawn | Prejudice | Jane Austen | Living Dead | Mr. Darcy | George Romero | Teeth | Max Brooks | Three Rivers Press | World War Z
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