Zombie Command

*UPDATE* This rumour has been debunked by Pride and Prejudice and Zombies author Seth Graham-Smith himself. PPZ is still planned to be made into a feature length movie though.

Having been followed by this Twitter account it would seem that Deadline Productions are creating a 6 part TV series of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Of course, what the Twitter account fails to provide any details on is who Deadline Productions are, when the series will be coming to TV or any other details about the show.

Using our awesome powers of looking at a computer monitor, their Twitter background has a UK Channel 4 logo on it, but whether that’s just an image they’re using or not is currently unclear.

We’ve reached out the possible production company and Channel 4 to see if we can find out more info.

De Bello Lemures, or the Roman War Against the Zombies of Armorica takes the zombie threat back to Ancient Rome, where the gladius has to take the place of the headshot. This time, the isolated farmhouse is a Roman villa.

A recovered Latin text tells the story of a struggle between Roman legionaries and the undead in 185 AD. Lucius Artorius Castus leads an expedition to Gaul to defeat a rebellion against the rule of the Emperor Commodus – and gets more than he bargained for when his enemies rise from the dead to fight again. The power of the zombie horde is amplified by the chaos of Ancient Rome’s competing religions and superstitions, and the terror the undead bring in their wake foreshadows the incipient medieval darkness already creeping into the world at the end of Rome’s Antonine age. Richly annotated, this mashup of survival horror and alternate history takes the reader on a bracing journey into one of ancient Rome’s dark corners.

You can buy it below in paperback below or for the Kindle (only $3.44!) or a free preview is also available here.

KEEP YOUR FAMILY SAFE FROM THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE
-with the first ever British guide to survive an attack!

Two British brothers, both martial arts instructors, have completed and published ‘Zompoc: how to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse’. Meticulously researched and vigorously detailed this important survival manual is the most detailed and up-to-date book you will find to keep you and your family safe during the Zompoc (Zombie Apocalypse).

This book is unique in its coverage of all zombie strains from the viral infected fast zombies through to the shambling re-animated undead. All subjects from zombie identification, first-aid, escape techniques, household defence, combat techniques and raiding through to bartering, supplies, vehicle modification, weapons and convoy structure are covered in great detail. With this book you can prepare for the day the Zompoc strikes and be ready to fight back and eradicate the zombie menace from our streets. This book is illustrated throughout and even contains full plans and instructions for a post-Zompoc rebuilding of civilisation!

The Zompoc guide combines the right amount of well researched and helpful information, whilst staying tongue in cheek to keep you entertained throughout. It is 300 pages, expertly written and beautifully illustrated with over 400 illustrations.

You can also catch the brothers at Day of the Undead or buy the book from Amazon UK below.

In this terrifying and hilarious prequel, we witness the genesis of the zombie plague in early-nineteenth century England. We watch Elizabeth Bennet evolve from a naïve young teenager into a savage slayer of the undead. We laugh as she begins her first clumsy training with nunchucks and katana swords and cry when her first blush with romance goes tragically awry. Written by acclaimed novelist (and Edgar Award nominee) Steve Hockensmith, Dawn of the Dreadfuls invites Austen fans to step back into Regency England, Land of the Undead!

In what could be seen as a cynical marketing plot to capitalize on the current hunger for all things zombie, Quirk Classic have announced a prequel to the hugely successful Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Dawn of the Dreadfuls will be the first work not to be directly based on an actual Austen novel. Whether this frees up the writing to include more zombies and a contemporary style is unclear but at least this won’t be massacring making awesome a literary classic.

The man who started it all (well, for all intents and purposes) George A. Romero has recently signed a 2 book deal with Headline Publishing in the UK to write about the origin of his zombies.

Presumably starting in San Diego with a corpse sitting up in the morgue (Diary of the Dead), the book will focus on how the zombies came to be and will hopefully for the first time explain exactly what a zombie can and can’t do.

Hopefully Romero will stick with ‘cosmic radiation’ as the cause (hinted at in Night of the Living Dead) and not kowtow to any pressure to make them of the more modern viral interpretations. As Romero’s zombies also maintain some semblance of their former lives perhaps we will find out exactly how much and what they remember.

Arguably, there’s nobody better qualified on the subject of zombies although Max Brooks, Zombie Survival Guide, comes close and for an apparent $300,000 advance the publishers must be hoping that the public want to learn from the master.

Are you tired of those pesky humans and their recession keeping you down? Fed up with all of those tiresome motivational books from “living” athletes, musicians, retired generals, and fortune 500 CEOs that just don’t get you? If so, then try the zombie way! With Z.E.O.: A Zombie’s Guide to Getting A(Head) in Business, you can rise from the grave today and become the brains of your company in just twelve short months!

Scripted by the world’s leading zombie authority, Max Brooks, “The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks” reveals how other eras and cultures have dealt with and survived the ancient viral plague. By immersing ourselves in past horror we may yet prevail over the coming outbreak in our time.

Not sure why books get trailers these days but here it is from Crown Books.

Yes with merely 196 shopping days left until Christmas it’s that time again where we have to start looking for gifts for our nearest and dearest.

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Zombies
The Book of Zombie Christmas Carols

IT’S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE ZOMBIES takes over two dozen of our most beloved Christmas carols and shreds them limb from limb, rewriting them from a zombie’s point-of-view. Tiny tots’ eyes are no longer aglow-they’re in a bowl. And Mommy’s not kissing Santa under the mistletoe-she’s chewing his face. Nobody-not Rudolph, Old Saint Nick, or even those three Wise Guys who traveled afar-is spared when the undead come knocking.With a foreword by New York Times Best-Selling Author Christopher Moore and jaw-dropping (literally) sketches accompanying each carol, this book will be the perfect holiday gift for humor lovers and anyone needing a break from Christmas-as-usual.

The book is written by Michael P. Spradling and illustrated by Jeff Weigel and is available from Amazon come October 27th.

Kim Paffenroth is a professor of religious studies and author of several books on the Bible, theology and, most importantly, zombies.

His previous works have included an award winning study into how Romero uses his zombie movies to criticize American society in Gospel of the Living Dead and zombie fiction in his Dying to Live series.

His most recent work is Valley of the Dead, a (probably) fictional account of what happened to Dante in the 17 years he was missing and his encounter with a zombie outbreak which inspired the horrors written about in his Divine Comedy, specifically Inferno.

Zombie Command catches up with Paffenroth and finds out why a student of theology writes about zombies.

Zombie Command: Can you explain a little about Valley of the Dead and why you chose to put a zombie spin on Dante’s story?

Kim Paffenroth: The premise is that during his wandering across Europe, the medieval Italian poet stumbled on a zombie infestation in a remote valley. The horrors he saw while fighting the undead – people being burned alive, devoured, torn apart, decapitated, crucified, boiled in pitch, etc. – formed the basis of the terrors he’d later put in his poem Inferno, his depiction of the underworld.The “why” is that when I was looking at Romero’s zombie films a few years ago, it struck me how similar his zombies are to the damned in Dante’s hell – mindless slaves to appetite. That’s the real insight both men had into human nature, as well as the idea that worse behavior – especially deception and malice – are not just matters of unrestrained appetite, but of deliberate, rational choice. So the idea that Romero’s zombies are similar to Dante got me to thinking about reversing the image, and making Dante’s Inferno into a Romeroesque zombie ordeal.

ZC: Will readers get more from Valley of the Dead if they are familiar with Inferno or can people (and simpletons like ZC’s own Gary) read it with no fore-knowledge of Dante?

KP: Well, part of the beauty of Dante is how many levels he himself is working on. Look at the upcoming Inferno video game: I’m guessing not a lot of engagement with Dante’s philosophy or theology there, but lifting his horrifying, monstrous images to create eye-catching vistas for violence. And that’s part of his appeal – Inferno is a very visual, sensual experience, as poetry should be in general. If I’ve succeeded even a little, it’s to make something similar – a kind of “standard” zombie story of gut-munching mayhem that fans can interact with on that level, while a Dante scholar could read the same scene and say, “Oh, that was an interesting way to handle Circle Seven.” If anything, I’d like Dante scholars to read the story and come away thinking, “Who is this Romero fellow? I’d like to see one of his films,” and for zombie fans to say, “I don’t remember Dante being so interesting when they made me read him in school. Maybe I’ll go back and take another look.” That would be a really great accomplishment for me as an artist and a fan of both genres.

ZC: Your fiction work and latest books all focus on zombies. How did you get into writing zombies?

KP: In my work as a professor, I kept looking further from the Bible for literary expressions of theological ideas. I first looked at “great” literature (e.g. Shakespeare, Melville, Dostoevsky), but then I started looking at pop culture, and that led to my nonfiction examination of the Romero films, Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero’s Visions of Hell on Earth (Baylor, 2006). While I was writing that, I had the hubris to think I might be able to create my own zombie fiction, populated with zombies of my own making, who would do and symbolize what I wanted them to. It’s been a lot of fun and a little success since then.

ZC: Inferno seems to lend itself well to a retelling and a game is currently in production with each game level representing one of the nine circles. How closely do the terrors that Dante witnesses in Valley of the Dead mirror the circles and order that they appear?

KP: Some of Dante’s scenes are so beautifully, touchingly done, that they could be followed quite closely, and everyone I think would know what you’re getting at (whether they knew Dante or not) and they’d be moved by the interaction. The circle of the lustful is like that, with the figure of Francesca; so I took a character like her, filled in her story so readers wouldn’t have to know it already (the way apparently readers or listeners to the original would’ve known her, as well as the story of Guinevere, in order to understand that episode), and I never needed to label her “lustful” – a reader can hear what she’s done, what were the extenuating circumstances, what are her rationalizations for her behavior, and make his or her own judgment. And, indeed, one of the fun things was since I gave Dante a slightly bigger entourage for this journey, I could show more people reacting to the sinner within the story itself: the man of action just wants just to condemn her; Dante and the Virgil character are more analytical, so they explain why they condemn her, but want to give her a chance to repent; and the Beatrice character simply loves her and refuses to judge her. (And I think all those reactions are fair to the analogs in Dante, they’re not just made up.)As for the actual, physical things going on around the people and zombies, that took some imagination, and a lot of the imagery is much more subdued than it was in the original. But I think anyone who knows Inferno will recognize each circle immediately, and anyone who doesn’t won’t notice the intrusions of Dante’s scenery. In other words, I tried to make sure each scene made sense on its own, as well as making an allusion (and often an interpretation) to the original.

ZC: Classic literature and zombies seem to be coming together recently with VotD and the recent release of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. What is it about zombies, or what zombies represent, that allows them to fit into the context of these texts?

KP: I think we’ve gotten used to the idea of staggering around mindlessly and soullessly. It’s easier to imagine than, say, imagining that I’m going to turn into a super-sexy, super-strong, indestructible, eternal being like a vampire. I don’t resemble such a being very much, and neither does anyone I know, so they seem more incredible, more unbelievable, and in their own way, more irrelevant. But a zombie (or, to take it back to Dante’s world, a sinner) is something I’m fairly familiar with being all the time.

ZC: Would you agree that any story could be made better by adding zombies?

KP: Hmmm. I don’t know about “better.” I suppose any great story is always hovering right at the edge of something supernatural intruding into it: whether the author makes that supernatural element explicit with a “monster” of some kind, or whether s/he leaves it just at the edge of the picture, determines a lot of how we experience the tale. So if you went around putting zombies in everywhere, I think you might ruin a balance that the author had constructed very carefully and deliberately. On the other hand, you might create something new that made people think about the issues raised by the work in a new light. To take a different example, I always imagine that if I put it on stage, I’d have them fighting a dragon during the storm scene in the middle of King Lear – but we never quite see it, it could all be part of his imagination. That would be a pretty neat addition, and wouldn’t really change anything, since he’s obviously wrestling with his inner demons anyway, and a fire breathing monster would just make that concrete.

ZC: The cover is illustrated by artist Alex McVey. Was he somebody you were keen to have do the cover from the beginning? What aspect of the book does the cover represent?

KP: Alex expressed interest in the project, and I’m thrilled to have someone of his stature working on it. I think his art captures some of the sense of rebirth and baptism implicit in Dante’s journey, but of course, also the sense of violence and gore, so it’s a nice balance of things in the original. Alex will also be doing other interior illustrations.

ZC: If you were to create a sequel, what allegory for the steps in Purgatorio would you create, that would continue the world you’ve created for Dante’s missing years? Or would that be giving too much away?

KP: Right now I’m leaning more toward trying another zombified version of a different great book. But if I were to work on Purgatorio, the geography would probably be easier to handle: climbing a big mountain seems more plausible than going deeper into an ever-narrowing funnel, where the weather changes radically each step of the way, from searing heat all the way to subzero tundra. Now that you remind me of the mount, I also like how the people at the bottom are just kind of wandering around, and are still menaced by the serpent and evil: that would also be an easier scenario to work into a different version.

ZC: What can we look forward to you working on next?

KP: I’m shopping a contemporary ghost story, so hopefully soon I’ll be known for something other than my zombies. But if zombies are what you’re craving, I’m also working on the next installment of the Dying to Live saga, and I’ve edited another anthology of zombie tales for Permuted Press.

The book is available to buy between now and August 31st from Horror Mall.

For more information about Kim Paffenroth you can visit his blog.

You can also win a signed copy by pre-ordering through Horror World’s competition.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth is the first in a series of three books which aim to put a new spin on the zombie genre.

Told from the point of view off a girl called Mary who has grown up in a village surrounded by the ‘unconsecrated’ (ie zombies) the story details her relationships, the harsh realities of being able to see your loved ones once they have been turned and what happens when the fences keeping the village safe are breached.

The first book was released in March with the next instalment being due out at the start of 2010. The film rights to the first book though have just been bought by a newly established production company called Seven Star Pictures who are rumoured to be developing the script for an A list starlet.

Being touted as doing for zombies what Twilight did for the vampire the movie is setting itself up to be huge. By the looks of the book it will certainly appeal to angsty pre- teens but we’ll just have to wait and see how the script pans out. Currently there aren’t any dates on when filming might begin but we’ll keep you updated as and when we know any more…
For more info on the book click onto the authors website.