What to Expect from "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies"

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies has been in the worst kind of post-production limbo. With losing directors, release dates being changed, and the film having wrapped back in November, one couldn't help but wonder if the movie would ever rise up from the metaphorical grave.

The storyline is, of course, very familiar to fans of Austen. The Bennet sisters are looking to be wed off to a man of good fortune and preferably very good looking. But the twist is that the zombie apocalypse is upon them, and their father has trained all of the girls to fight against the zombies that might try to overtake them.

Elizabeth Bennet has always been a strong character, a feminist it seemed well before women started using the term at the drop of a hat. Lily James, of Downton Abbey and Cinderella fame, enjoyed playing the "fiercer" side of Elizabeth, stating that

Liz Bennet is already an independent, free thinking young woman, but it’s even more enhanced in this. She’s really strong and really badass

Lily and the rest of the cast were trained in combat for their roles, and in doing so there was some room for unfortunate mistakes. She recalled unfortunate incident during rehearsal

I did stamp on an extra's head. I thought it was a dummy and it was a real, live person. And I stamped really hard. It was a rehearsal too. We weren’t actually shooting. He was fine, though!

And while there is still a lot of tenstion between Darcy and Elizabeth, she now has a pretty healthy way to get rid of that sexual frustration, handed to her on a silver platter in the form of zombies needing to be killed.

One of the most well-known things about Darcy is that he is pretentious and very standoffish at first. When asked how much of a jerk he is in the movie, Sam Riley, of Maleficent fame, had this to say

"He’s just misunderstood, isn’t he? But he’s a snob. And he’s very proud. I haven’t seen it yet, so I’m hoping I’m not too much of a jerk."

The thing that is probably in the back of everyone's mind, however, is how well the movie will be received by fans of Jane Austen's work, and whether or not Jane Austen should start her own zombie apocalypse to seek out revenge on those involved. Author Seth Grahame-Smith stated that

"I thought [the Janites] were going to burn me in effigy...But Austen was really, really funny. She’s an extraordinarily funny author. So, while we’ll never know, I think she’d take it all in stride. Or she’d kill me."

At the end of the day, it is an interesting concept, and the cast is phenomenal. I look forward to seeing the movie brought to life, as both a fan of the supernatural and Jane Austen.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies will be in theaters February 5, 2016.

[Source: entertainment tonight ]