This article was taken from the March 2016 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
With Pride & Prejudice & Zombies out and The Walking Deadback, it's time to prepare.
Seth Grahame-Smith knows a little something about surviving the zombie apocalypse. Before his 2009 parody novel Pride & Prejudice & Zombies became a viral bestseller, the LA-based author had written How to Survive a Horror Movie, a 2007 comedy tome with tips both practical (never go upstairs) and meta (hide in the deleted scenes). "I prefer my zombies slow and stupid," he says. "I was influenced by George A. Romero's. The more tragic they are, the funnier it is when they're dispatched by our heroines -- beheaded, blown up or burned."
The genesis of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies is legendary: Grahame-Smith's editor Jason Rekulak was playing around with titles of works in the public domain ("Wuthering Heights & Pirates; Hamlet In Space") before alighting on Austen, which he pitched to Smith. "It struck me as the best idea I'd ever heard," he says. "I had this image of girls in ball gowns, kicking and fighting. It was incredibly, wonderfully stupid." The book spawned a whole genre, and a film iteration -- resurrected by director Burr Steers.
For Grahame-Smith, it's been a launch pad: he's working on several Hollywood projects, including The LEGO Batman Movie, and will soon write and direct a film adaptation of The Flash, tying into the Warner Bros' DC Comics universe. "It taught me a great deal about the phenomenon of the zeitgeist, and what's viral," he says. The undead? They never go out of style.
Pride & Prejudice & Zombiesis out now.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
