‘Zombieland: Double Tap’ originally used "boring" zombie obsession for plot
10 long years after the first movie came out, we’re finally getting a sequel to Zombieland and according to a premiere crowd, Zombieland: Double Tap it’s well worth the wait.
While fans are pleased with the outcome of the new film, director Ruben Fleischer told Bloody Disgusting there were a number of different scripts over the years that could have been the final outcome. Fair warning to anyone reading beyond here, there may be spoilers below.
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The director revealed that as they got caught up in other projects in the time after releasing the first Zombieland, drafts kept being made.
Some aspects of those rejected drafts worked at the time they were written but as they continued they felt played out. One notable one took a very meta look at society’s obsession with zombies following the massive success of The Walking Dead after the original came out.
“The theme of [one] script was that zombies had kind of gotten boring and killing zombies had kind of gotten boring. It was meta in that way. It was a commentary on the fact that there’s just too much zombies. We’ve reached peak zombie and so I think the characters ennui was a little bit reflective of [the audience’s] as well. [Zombies] weren’t any kind of real threat and so Tallahassee lost his passion because he just didn’t have the challenge anymore. In the original draft Tallahassee was really excited when he came across [the T-800s], what were then called “Super Zombies”, because it was his reason for living was kind of his spark was lit again.”
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Although that would have made perfect sense for the film to do in, say, 2013 or 2014 it would feel extremely out of touch if it made it through this year.
Some elements of rejected scripts did make it through to the new movie though, even if they were adjusted. In the movie, there are two doppelgängers for Tallahassee and Columbus but that started out as a whole other idea.
“There was a version at one point with the doppelgängers where it was originally just one of them: Alpha Tallahassee and…he was one-upping everything that Tallahassee was doing. We thought that was such a fun concept that we might as well duplicate it [by adding another doppelgänger] so things evolved I guess over the course of the scripts.”
Check out the trailer for the movie below and don’t forget to hit up your local theatres tomorrow to check it out.
What do you think of the different script idea for Zombieland: Double Tap? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
