Pride & Prejudice & Zombies

[Loredoctor]

'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies': Austen classic revamped

Jane Austen's classic novel Pride and Prejudice is being updated as a zombie horror book and film.

A parody of the English novel is due to be published in April under the name Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, with Hollywood studios already bidding to turn the new book into a blockbuster movie.

The new book has been penned by Los Angeles-based TV comedy writer Seth Grahame-Smith, who has been able to update Austen's original tale because it is out of copyright.

Austen fans are in for a shock, with heroine Elizabeth Bennet and her four sisters becoming zombie slayers and taught how to fight like Japanese ninjas by Mr Darcy.

"It quickly became obvious that Jane (Austen) had laid down the blueprint for a zombie novel," The Sunday Times quoted Grahame-Smith as saying.

"Why else in the original should a regiment arrive on Lizzie Bennet's doorstep when they should have been off fighting Napoleon?

"It was to protect the family from an invasion of brain-eaters, obviously."

Grahame-Smith said about 85 per cent of his novel is Austen's original text.

"I hated her when I was forced to read Austen in school, but when I started re-reading I realised she was a brutal, but very funny, satirist," he said.

"I can only aspire to be as mean-spirited as she could be."

[Brother Charn]

Hilarious. I can only hope it comes to a movie theater near me. I was just talked into watching 'The Jane Austen Book Club' with my wife this weekend - I will never get that time back. I watched a movie abut people reading books!
Where were the Zombies on Saturday? They could have saved me...

[wayfriend]

This needed to be done for a long time. Bravo!

[sgt.null]

i look forward to a jane project for the first time in my life.

[matrixman]

This sounds terrific!

I should do the same thing for Thomas Hardy. On the other hand, maybe not. His work deserves to slide into obscurity.

[Stone Magnet]

Sorry to ressurect an old thread, but this book is epicly classic. The captioned illustrations and ninja subplot were highlights. I read the whole thing in one hit at the university bookstore...couldn't put it down haha.

[Avatar]

We don't care if people resurrect old threads, as long as it's relevantly. Which this is. So go ahead.

--A

[I'm Murrin]

Things are getting out of hand. In the bookstore today I saw Jane Slayre and Android Karenina.

[duchess of malfi]

And isn't there a book out called Sea Monsters and Sensibility (or something along those lines)? Not sure if it is by the zombie P&P people or not, but another Austen spoof.

And books about Abraham Lincoln and Queen Victoria being some sort of monster slayers?

[SerScot]

[duchess of malfi]

\

I cannot help but laugh at them in a so-dumb-what-are-they-thinking sort of way. Yes, I watch the History Channel show Ancient Aliens for the laughs. Drives my kids crazy, because they say their IQ's drop 50 points everytime I turn it on. I say you gotta laugh or you gotta cry over that sort of stuff. I prefer to laugh.

[SerScot]

The idea of taking classic works of English and American literature and adding zombies or sea monsters just seems sort of cheap to me. It's like fan-fiction given legitimacy.

[duchess of malfi]

The idea of taking classic works of English and American literature and adding zombies or sea monsters just seems sort of cheap to me. It's like fan-fiction given legitimacy.

I have not read any of them and have no plans to, but I will admit I get a chuckle out of them when I see them at the book store.

Maybe it's just badly written fan fiction, but it might just be people goofing around and having good natured fun with the classics, too. (As I have not read them, I honestly cannot say either way).

And if any of these books gets people to read the real classics - or real histories about Lincoln or Victoria, then it would be a good thing.

Just like a recent episode of Ancient Aliens where some asstard claimed that the Great Pyramid of Giza was really a power plant which generated a ginormously powerful microwave which it beamed into space to power the mother ship. One of the stupidest things any human being could ever say, so it was hilarious and tragic at the same time. Yet if it inspires someone who does not know any better to research actual Egyptian history or any form of reality based engineering or architecture, then it has done something worthwhile (other than provide laughs ).