Ever since ZOMBIELAND hit cinema screens in 2009 to much critical and somewhat financial success, rumours of a sequel have been circulating both as a straight up sequel and also as a TV series. However now it seems like director Ruben Fleischer is finally stating that it is very unlikely to ever happen. Speaking on the red carpet for the premiere of his recent film GANGSTER SQUAD starring Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling and, ZOMBIELAND alumni, Emma Stone, Fleischer had the following to say.
I hate to do it, but I can say that there’s no immediate plans to make the movie. There’s no script, really, so the likelihood of it happening is slim. But I would not wanna put a nail in that coffin.
Now while this doesn’t seem like a definitive ‘no’, Fleischer did elaborate on why it doesn’t seem likely and it’s not the studio dismissing the idea but rather a creative decision.
Well I think that the studio would be very excited to make it. It’s not that the studio is not excited, it’s that we took one shot at the script [and] it wasn’t something we all got excited to do. And just on a personal level, I was really excited to, having made one movie, to make different movies, not just go back into that world again. But now that I have some distance and I’ve done some other stuff, I would be more inclined to go back to Zombieland I guess you could say. But at the time when the talk of the sequel was really—when it felt like it was possible—I was really kind of shying away from it just because I’ve only made one movie, I wanna make different movies with different people and learn different things, and so I was a little hesitant to just jump right back into the same thing.
This mirrors some of the statements that both Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson discussed last year when talking about the subject, there had to be a real reason to return to that world and not just because it would be cool making a sequel. Fleischer finally also revealed what direction the draft of the sequel took.
Needless to say it was a continuation of the original story with the same characters. I guess the only thing I could really say is that the threat to our heroes wasn’t only zombies, like they encounter other people that they’re all jockeying for positions.
So a fairly logical and unsurprising continuation of the story in the first one. On one hand I think it’s a shame that we won’t get a sequel, I think the way that Zombieland handled the genre was different enough to warrant a revisiting and I think there could still be a lot to explore in that universe without making it seem redundant. However, I also think that if the people behind the film have little desire to make a sequel, then they shouldn’t do it because you can damn well guarantee that it will suck big time if they try. Maybe something will change in the future and they will all get an itch to try again, but for now this seems pretty dead in the water.
Source: Collider
