Still, when one of the characters is affected by the zombie plague, it’s both grotesque and surprisingly affecting. Of course, the juxtaposition of the careful manners of the Regency period with brain-eating zombies is silly and a little thrilling, making for a frisson that lasts throughout the book. The slow-moving, limb-dragging, single-minded creatures that care only about infecting others and biting brains.” His earlier books - all humorous nonfiction - include 2007’s “How to Survive a Horror Movie.” He describes the zombies in his Austen remix as “the George Romero zombies of the 1960s and 1970s. If he knows anything, he’s not spilling.Īnd yet, film remains a touch point for the author. The film rights are owned by the publisher, not by Grahame-Smith.
Rumors, spread on the Internet and even in Quirk’s publicity materials, suggest that Natalie Portman has signed to star. In February, the Times of London wrote a piece about Hollywood’s bidding war over the book - more of a “bidding skirmish” at that point, Grahame-Smith admits - which became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Periodically, he would zoom out to assess the balance between the Austen and zombie parts.Įven before publication, “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” was discovered by bloggers and others on the Internet who focused on both the cover - which features a Regency portrait by Sir William Beechey that was zombified by Quirk Books artist Doogie Horner, in which a young woman turns toward the reader, her lower face eroded, exposing a bony jaw and vicious, skeletal teeth - and the opening line: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.”įrom there, news spread to the mainstream media. He pasted the original text into a document on his computer, then, using a second color, began adding zombie elements.
He started by carefully mapping out where zombies might fit - “you kill somebody off in Chapter 7, it has repercussions in Chapter 56,” he explained. Grahame-Smith’s publisher, Philadelphia-based Quirk Books, handed him the title and a very short deadline.
As only makes sense for such a hybrid project, the genesis of the novel was a mashup in its own right.
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