Zombieland

''Zombieland'' is a 2009 American post-apocalyptic zombie comedy film directed by Ruben Fleischer in his theatrical debut and written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick. The film follows a geeky college student ( Jesse Eisenberg) making his way through a post-apocalyptic zombie apocalypse, meeting three strangers (Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, and Abigail Breslin) along the way and together taking an extended road trip across the Southwestern United States in an attempt to find a sanctuary free from zombies.

The film premiered at Fantastic Fest on September 25, 2009, and was theatrically released on October 2, 2009, in the United States by Columbia Pictures. ''Zombieland'' was a critical and commercial success, grossing more than $75.6 million in U.S. and surpassing the 2004 film '' Dawn of the Dead'' as the top-grossing zombie film in the U.S. until ''World War Z'' in 2013. The film was extremely successful in home sales, grossing $54 million, which is half of the film's box office. A sequel, '' Zombieland: Double Tap'', was released in 2019.

Plot

Two months have passed since a strain of mad cow disease mutated into "mad person disease" that became "mad zombie disease", which overran the entire United States (with the infection presumably spreading to the rest of the world), turning many Americans into vicious zombies. Survivors of the zombie epidemic have learned that growing attached to other survivors is not advisable because they could die at any moment, so many have taken to using their city of origin as nicknames.

A lonely college student is making his way from his college dorm in Austin, Texas, to Columbus, Ohio, to see whether his parents are still alive. Columbus encounters another survivor heading to Tallahassee, a hardened redneck. Tallahassee reluctantly allows Columbus to travel with him. He mentions to Columbus that he misses his puppy, "Buck", that was killed by zombies, as well as his addiction to Twinkies, which he actively tries to find.

The pair meets con artist sisters Wichita and Little Rock, who trick Tallahassee and Columbus into handing over their weapons by pretending that Little Rock is infected by the disease, then stealing their Escalade. The two men find a yellow Hummer H2 loaded with weapons and go after the sisters. However, the girls spring another trap for them and take them hostage. Tallahassee steals his gun back and has a stand-off with Wichita, until Columbus intervenes saying that they have bigger problems to worry about, resulting in an uneasy truce between them.

The sisters reveal that they are going to the Pacific Playland amusement park in Los Angeles, an area supposedly free of zombies. After learning his hometown has been destroyed, and his parents likely killed, Columbus decides to accompany the others. Along the trip, Columbus becomes attracted to Wichita, but is wary of a relationship due to his first experience with a zombie being a college dormmate he also had a crush on.

When the group reaches Hollywood, Tallahassee directs them to the mansion of his celebrity crush, Bill Murray, to stay for the night. Tallahassee and Wichita meet Murray himself, uninfected but disguised as a zombie so he can walk safely around town. They try playing a prank on Columbus and Little Rock by having him pretend to be a real zombie, only for Columbus to accidentally kill Murray. Columbus realizes during a game of Monopoly that "Buck" was actually Tallahassee's son, who had become infected and died as a result. While at Murray's mansion, Tallahassee bonds with Little Rock, with whom he was previously feuding. Despite Wichita's attraction to Columbus, she fears attachment and leaves with Little Rock for Pacific Playland the next morning. Columbus decides to go after Wichita and convinces Tallahassee to join him.

At Pacific Playland, the sisters activate all the rides and lights so they can enjoy the park, only to unwittingly draw the attention of a multitude of zombies in the surrounding area. A chase ensues, and just as the sisters are trapped on a drop tower ride, Tallahassee and Columbus arrive. Tallahassee lures the zombies away, creating a distraction for Columbus to get to the tower ride; both using the attractions to their advantage. Tallahassee eventually locks himself in a game booth, shooting zombies as they arrive. Columbus successfully evades and shoots through several zombies to reach the tower and help the girls down, but not before changing one of his rules for survival to conquer his fear of clowns while facing off against a clown zombie. As a show of gratitude, Wichita kisses Columbus and reveals her real name: Krista. As the group leaves Pacific Playland, Columbus realizes that without relating to other people, one might as well be a zombie and that he now has what he has always wanted—a family.

The rules

A running gag (and a central theme throughout the film) is the list of rules Columbus comes up with for surviving in the zombie-infested world. By the end of the film, his list has 33 rules, yet only a few are mentioned. A series of promotional videos starring Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg expanded on the list presented in the film.

Wichita and Little Rock have their own rule: "Trust no one. Just you and me."

Cast

* Woody Harrelson as Tallahassee, Columbus' trusted partner. He despises zombies, and enjoys killing and torturing them.
* Jesse Eisenberg as Columbus, a young man who lived by himself in a beat-up apartment before becoming one of the few survivors of the zombie apocalypse. He lives by a strict set of rules to stay alive. The character is also the narrator of the film.
* Emma Stone as Wichita, Little Rock's older sister and Columbus's love interest. She is one of the few survivors of the zombie apocalypse, and overly protective of her little sister. Her real name is Krista.
* Abigail Breslin as Little Rock, Wichita's 12-year-old sister. She is sweet, but not that innocent and has had to grow up very quickly because of the apocalypse.
* Bill Murray as a fictionalized version of himself, still living in his Los Angeles home and regularly disguising himself as a zombie to travel around the area. The cameo role was originally written for Patrick Swayze, but he was battling pancreatic cancer at the time and was too sick to make it to set. Swayze died in September 2009. Other casting considerations included Sylvester Stallone, Dwayne Johnson, Matthew McConaughey, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Joe Pesci, Mark Hamill, Kevin Bacon, and Dustin Hoffman.
* Amber Heard as 406, Columbus's ill-fated neighbor who becomes the first zombie he kills.

Character names

The main characters do not use each other's real names, but identify themselves using place names (Columbus, Tallahassee, Wichita, and Little Rock) that relate to them. This includes Columbus' neighbor, named 406 after her room, and his fictional sexual conquest Beverly Hills, as well as Sister Cynthia Knickerbocker, whom Columbus identifies as a "Zombie Kill of the Week" winner, and whose surname is actually an obsolete term for a citizen or inhabitant of New York City. The one exception is Murray playing himself. At the end of the film, Wichita tells Columbus that her real name is Krista.

Production

Writing

Writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick stated that the idea for ''Zombieland'' had "lived in heirheads" for four-and-a-half years. The story was originally developed in 2005 as a spec script for a television pilot in the summer of 2005.
Wernick stated, "We've got a long brainstorming document that still to this day gets updated on a near-weekly basis with ideas". Director Ruben Fleischer helped develop the script from a series into a self-contained feature by providing a specific destination to the road story, the amusement park. Earlier versions of the script called the protagonists Flagstaff and Albuquerque, rather than Columbus and Tallahassee, and the female characters were called Wichita and Stillwater.
The celebrity who would cameo as himself was written as a zombified, dancing Patrick Swayze, including references to highlights of Swayze's career, even including a recreation of the potter's wheel scene from ''Ghost''. Later versions of the script considered Sylvester Stallone, Joe Pesci, Mark Hamill, Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Bacon, Jean-Claude Van Damme or Matthew McConaughey as the celebrity. The actor cast in the part dropped out a week before filming, and Harrelson made a few calls and was able to get Bill Murray to play the part instead. According to Harrelson most of the scene was improvised. Harrelson accepted the role on four conditions, two of which were about casting and crew. The third condition required the film to have an environmentally conscious set. The fourth condition required that the director not eat dairy products for a week, a task which Fleischer described was "like for an alcoholic not to drink". He succeeded and maintained a vegetarian diet for 11 months.

Filming and design

Principal photography began February 2009 in Hollywood, California, with scenes being shot at Scream Fest Theme Park and other locations. Filming continued in March in Atlanta, Hapeville, Morrow, Decatur, Newnan and Powder Springs, Georgia, where actress Abigail Breslin celebrated her 13th birthday by adopting a shelter puppy. ''Zombieland'' was filmed in digital, using the Panavision Genesis digital camera and had a 41-day shooting schedule.

The theme-park scenes for the film's climax, Pacific Playland, were mostly shot in Valdosta's local theme park Wild Adventures Water and Theme Park. Some of the amusement rides prominently featured in the film include Pharaoh's Fury, the Double Shot (redubbed "Blast Off"), the Rattler, the Aviator, and the Bug Out. A haunted-house facade was constructed at the theme park, but the interior was filmed on location at Netherworld Haunted House outside Atlanta.

Special effects makeup designer Tony Gardner, who helped Rick Baker create the signature look of Michael Jackson's music video "Thriller" and has contributed to other Hollywood films such as ''127 Hours'', '' Hairspray'', and '' There's Something About Mary'', was brought on to design the look of the film's zombies. Michael Bonvillain, who was ''Cloverfield''s cinematographer, was brought on for the "lively" hand-held camerawork. "Basically, it's the end of the world; the entire nation is zombies", stated Gardner. "And he humansare trying to get from the east coast to the west coast". For one shooting scene, Gardner said, "There were 160 zombies, in prosthetics, on set in an amusement park". He said it is "how you present yourself as a zombie that determines how people will react to you" and that "once the contact lenses go in", he thinks "all bets are off".

Gardner said he was excited about working on the film with first-time filmmaker Ruben Fleischer, who gave him free rein in his zombie design. " eare just trying to be real extreme with it", stated Gardner, "and trying to balance the scares out with the comedy". He described having to makeover physically attractive actors who usually benefit from their looks as "a little off-putting" after seeing some of them in their character makeup for the first time.

Harrelson had input into the wardrobe for his character, Tallahassee. "I never worked so long and hard on an outfit in my life," he stated. "What this guy wears is who he is. You want to get a sense of this guy as soon as you see him. So I pick out the necklaces, the sunglasses. But the hat? The minute you see that on Tallahassee, you buy him. He's real. And he's got a real cool hat". Harrelson's choice of headwear for Tallahassee came not just down to style, but also to his environmental passions: the distinctive hat is handmade in Brazil by a company called The Real Deal using recycled cargo-truck tarps and wire from old truck tires.

Shortly after finishing the filming of ''Zombieland'', Harrelson had an altercation with a TMZ photographer at New York City's LaGuardia Airport. His defense was that he was still in character and thought the cameraman was a zombie.

Effects

The special-effects team created several visual elements, including "The Rules for Survival", which appear on-screen as they are related to the audience by Columbus: "Do cardio", "Beware of bathrooms", "Check the back seat", and so forth. The texts are rendered in three dimensions. "When a previously stated rule becomes relevant—when nature calls, for instance—the relevant text pops up, occasionally getting splattered with blood." ''Slate'''s Josh Levin said, "The pop-up bit works precisely because ''Zombieland'' unspools like a game—how can you survive a zombie horde armed with a shotgun, an SUV and a smart mouth?"

Release

A trailer of ''Zombieland'' was released on June 18, 2009. Distributed by Columbia Pictures, the film was released on 2 October 2009, a week earlier than originally advertised.

Home media

''Zombieland'' was released by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment on February 2, 2010, on Blu-ray and DVD. The film was released on March 15, 2010 on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK. Select Best Buy stores sold a special edition on both DVD and Blu-ray with an additional disc featuring two featurettes. It was also released as a film for the PSP UMD.

As of January, 2020, the film had sold 2,816,504 DVDs and 623,782 Blu-ray Discs, totalling $37,048,110 and $16,970,383, respectively, for a total of $54,018,493 in North America.

Zombieland was released on Ultra HD Blu-ray on October 1, 2019, a few weeks before the sequel was released in theatres.

Reception

Box office

The film debuted at number one at the box office in North America, with ticket sales of $24,733,155 over its opening weekend, averaging about $8,147 from 3,036 theaters, matching its production budget. It was credited as having the second-highest-grossing start on record for a zombie film behind the 2004 ''Dawn of the Dead'' remake, and as "the first American horror comedy in recent memory to find significant theatrical success". The film grossed $60.8 million in 17 days, becoming the top-grossing zombie film in history; the record was previously held by the ''Dawn of the Dead'' remake. It was later surpassed by '' Resident Evil: Afterlife'' which grossed over $290 million worldwide and ''World War Z'' which grossed over $540 million worldwide. ''Zombieland'' closed on December 13, 2009, with a final gross of $75,590,286 in North America and $26,801,254 in other territories for a worldwide gross of $102,391,540.

Critical response

''Zombieland'' received positive reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of based on reviews from critics, with a rating average of . The website's consensus reads: "Wickedly funny and featuring plenty of gore, ''Zombieland'' is proof that the zombie subgenre is far from dead." On Metacritic the film has a weighted average which assigns a normalized rating to reviews from mainstream critics, the film holds a score of 73 out of 100 based on 31 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore during the opening weekend, gave ''Zombieland'' an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.

Roger Ebert was surprised by ''Zombieland''s ability to be significantly humorous while zombies remained the focus of the film, and felt that "all of this could have been dreary, but not here. The filmmakers show invention and well-tuned comic timing". He credited Bill Murray's cameo appearance as receiving the "single biggest laugh" of the year and gave the film 3 out of 4 stars.
Murray's cameo was called out for attention by other reviewers: Marc Savlov of the ''Austin Chronicle'' credited it as "the single most outrageously entertaining unexpected celebrity cameo of any film—genre or otherwise—" that he had seen in a "long, long time" and that while the film did little to advance the genre, its smart script and high action made it very enjoyable. Savlov categorized ''Zombieland'' as being "dead set against being dead serious" with its tonal pallor "ha ingmore in common with a foreshortened ''It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World'' than with '' 28 Days'' or '' Weeks Later''".

The film's witty use of dialogue and popular culture was also praised by Ty Burr of ''The Boston Globe'', who said the film "makes no claims to greatness", but that what it "has instead—in spades—is deliciously weary end-of-the-world banter".
Michael Ordona of ''Los Angeles Times'' praised director Fleischer for "bring ngimpeccable timing and bloodthirsty wit to the proceedings".

Some reviewers saw deeper levels in the plot and cinematography; cinematographer Michael Bonvillain was praised for capturing "some interesting images amid the postapocalyptic carnival of carnage, as when he transforms the destruction of a souvenir shop into a rough ballet", while Stephanie Zacharek of Salon.com said, "the picture is beautifully paced" and highlighted "a halcyon middle section where, in what could be viewed as a sideways homage to ''Rebel Without a Cause'', our rootless wanderers share a brief respite in an empty, lavish mansion".

Claudia Puig of ''USA Today'' said, "underlying the carnage in ''Zombieland'' is a sweetly beating heart", and, "This road movie/horror flick/dark comedy/earnest romance/action film hybrid laces a gentle drollness through all the bloody mayhem". ''Entertainment Weekly''s Lisa Schwarzbaum concluded, "At the bone, ''Zombieland'' is a polished, very funny road picture shaped by wisenheimer cable-TV sensibilities and starring four likable actors, each with an influential following".

Josh Levin of ''Slate'' drew parallels with '' Adventureland'': in both films, Jesse Eisenberg tries to win over his dream girl, a girl who has been hardened by life, and both feature a theme park. He goes so far as to call the film "an undead ''Adventureland''—a '' Pride and Prejudice and Zombies'' for the Facebook generation".

''Time'''s Richard Corliss described the film as "an exhilarating ride, start to finish" and reasoned "Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg set a high bar for this subgenre with ''Shaun of the Dead,'' but Reese, Wernick, and Fleischer may have trumped them". "This isn't just a good zombie comedy. It's a damn fine movie, period. And that's high praise, coming from a vampire guy", he stated.

Not all comparisons with ''Shaun of the Dead'' were favorable: Joshua Rothkopf of '' Time Out New York'' characterized the "extra injection of pop-culture neuroticism" as "the one innovation" of the film, declaring that while ''Zombieland'' was funny, it was not particularly scary and stated that it "simply isn't as witty as ''Shaun of the Dead'', forever the yuks-meet-yucks standard".
Similarly, ''The Globe and Mail''s Rick Groen said "it's far more charming than chilling and way more funny than frightening", though he suggested that Rule No. 32 to 'enjoy the little things' was worth observing for a light comedy.
Manohla Dargis of ''The New York Times'' classified the film as " minor diversion dripping in splatter and groaning with self-amusement" and lamented the lack of a real plot more concrete than a series of comedy takes on zombie-slaying.

Accolades

Soundtrack

The film's music was composed by David Sardy. The soundtrack was released on October 6, 2009, by Relativity Music Group.

The song For Whom the Bell Tolls by the band Metallica was used in the opening credits scene.

Sequel

Due to the film's success, writers Reese and Wernick always planned a possible sequel, with many more ideas they wanted to explore. In August 2016, Reese and Wernick confirmed that they were working on ''Zombieland 2'' and meeting with Woody Harrelson to discuss the film, while stating "all the cast is pretty excited."

The film, ''Zombieland: Double Tap'', featuring the return of the original cast, was released on October 18, 2019, the tenth anniversary of the original film's release, and was once again a critical and financial success.

Television series

In October 2011, it was reported that Fox Broadcasting Company and Sony Pictures were considering a television adaption of the series to be aired on CBS, with Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese writing the script, but with the main actors of the original film likely not returning. The television program was planned to begin in fall, 2012. These plans did not come to fruition. In January 2013, it was revealed that the casting call for the production just went out for the main characters, with a few changes to the movie for the show and the addition of two new characters, Atlanta and Ainsley.

In March 2013, it was announced that Amazon Studios had ordered a pilot episode. Reese, Wernick and Pollone were joined by Eli Craig, who directed the pilot. Tyler Ross plays Columbus, Kirk Ward plays Tallahassee, Maiara Walsh plays Wichita and Izabela Vidovic plays Little Rock. A new character named Detroit (voiced by Kendra Fountain) was introduced as an ex-OnStar operator, serving as the gang's navigator. The pilot was released in April 2013 on Lovefilm and at Amazon Video. On May 17, 2013, Rhett Reese, creator of the TV adaptation, announced that ''Zombieland: The Series'' would not be picked up to be a series by Amazon. Reese commented on the fan backlash, saying "I'll never understand the vehement hate the pilot received from die-hard Zombieland fans. You guys successfully hated it out of existence."

References

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2009 films
2000s buddy films
2009 comedy horror films
2000s monster movies
2000s comedy road movies
American buddy films
American comedy horror films
American comedy road movies
American zombie films
American zombie comedy films
Columbia Pictures films
2009 directorial debut films
2000s English-language films
Films directed by Ruben Fleischer
Films scored by David Sardy
Films set in 2009
Films set in amusement parks
Films set in Atlanta
Films set in Austin, Texas
Films set in Los Angeles
Films set in Washington, D.C.
Zombieland (franchise)
Films shot in Georgia (U.S. state)
Films shot in Los Angeles
Films about viral outbreaks
American post-apocalyptic films
Relativity Media films
Films with screenplays by Paul Wernick
Films with screenplays by Rhett Reese
Parodies of horror
2009 comedy films
2000s American films