A "zombie romance" seems like a scary proposition, but Warm Bodies shouldn't scare off hardcore zombie fans. In fact, a story about a zombie retaining some intelligence goes back to George Romero's Day of the Dead, and explored a bit more in Land of the Dead. Warm Bodies takes the concept of zombie intelligence a step further.
50/50 director Jonathan Levine adapted Isaac Marion's novel into the script, and told The Playlist that he think the movie will be an "exciting adventure movie."
I’m prepping and will be shooting in a month and I’m really excited about it. It’s going to be super different and very cool and an opportunity for me to push the boundaries of style and tone, after doing a movie where it’s a lot of people just talking together on a couch. It’s broadened the scale of what I’ve done but it’s also a challenging topic, it’s got a great cast, it’s a wonderful book, and it’s certainly going to be different and I think it’s an exciting adventure movie. But I hope it will be unique [and] visually arresting.
Warm Bodies stars Nicholas Hoult as an existentially challenged zombie named R who befriends the girlfriend (Teresa Palmer) of one of his victims (Dave Franco, perhaps?). Rob Corddry plays R's zombie friend M, and John Malkovich plays Palmer's dad, General Grigio. And yes, there is a little bit of zombie romance in there, too.
Warm Bodies is one of a few anticipated zombie movies on the horizon, including World War Z and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but Levine says that he isn't worried about comparisons.
We’ll beat them six months to the screen, which is cool… Even if there are similarities I can’t imagine they’ll be very similar… Hopefully, I don’t fuck it up for them. Or hopefully I do fuck it up for them. I mean, it’s so good that no one could possibly make another one again, ever.
Warm Bodies, so far, does not have a release date. That will change soon. The script we read was pretty good, even if the zombie romance stuff was still a little tough to swallow. But, don't worry, the movie is not Twilight, despite both being developed by Summit Entertainment.
