Zombieland
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Ruben Fleischer
Produced by	Gavin Polone
Written by	Paul Wernick Rhett Reese
Narrated by	Jesse Eisenberg
Starring	Woody Harrelson Jesse Eisenberg Emma Stone Abigail Breslin
Music by	David Sardy
Cinematography	Michael Bonvillain
Editing by	Peter Amundson Alan Baumgarten
Studio	Relativity Media Pariah
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release date(s)	October 2, 2009 (2009-10-02)
Running time	88 minutes[1]
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$23.6 million[2]
Gross revenue	$102,391,542[2]

Zombieland is a 2009 American zombie comedy film directed by Ruben Fleischer from a screenplay written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick. The film stars Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, and Abigail Breslin as survivors of a zombie apocalypse. Together they take an extended road trip in an attempt to find a sanctuary free from zombies.
Zombieland received positive critical reviews and was a commercial success: It grossed more than $60.8 million in 17 days, surpassing the Dawn of the Dead remake to become the top-grossing zombie film to date in the United States.^[3]

Contents [hide] 1 Plot 2 Cast 3 Themes 3.1 The rules 3.2 Character names 4 Production 4.1 Writing 4.2 Filming and design 4.3 Effects 5 Release 5.1 Home media 6 Reception 6.1 Critical response 6.2 Box office 6.3 Awards 7 Sequel 8 References 9 External links

Plot

The film is set in a post-apocalyptic United States, two months after a mutated strain of mad cow disease has turned most humans into zombies. College student "Columbus" (Jesse Eisenberg) is on his way to Columbus, Ohio to see if his parents are still alive. He loses his car in an accident and encounters "Tallahassee" (Woody Harrelson), who is on a quest to find the last Twinkies on Earth. They travel together and when they stop at a grocery store, they meet two sisters, "Wichita" (Emma Stone) and "Little Rock" (Abigail Breslin). The sisters con them into handing over their weapons and steal their vehicle. Later, the two men find another truck loaded with weapons, but when they meet the girls again, the girls attempt once more to steal their truck. Columbus proposes a truce and suggests they travel together.
The group decides to travel to "Pacific Playland" amusement park, which is rumored to be zombie-free. Columbus disagrees at first, but when Wichita informs him that his hometown has been destroyed, he decides to stay with the group, having nowhere else to go. Along the way, they pass through Hollywood and Tallahassee decides to take them to Bill Murray's mansion. Tallahassee and Wichita meet Murray himself, uninfected but disguised as a zombie so that he can walk safely among the infected and play golf without being bothered. When Murray attempts to scare Columbus and Little Rock as a practical joke, Columbus shoots and kills him, believing him to be a real zombie. Later, Columbus realizes Tallahassee has been grieving for his young son, lost to the zombies, rather than his dog as he had earlier led Columbus to believe. Wichita begins developing feelings for Columbus, and the two nearly kiss; fearing attachment, she leaves with Little Rock for Pacific Playland. Columbus decides to go after Wichita, and he and Tallahassee, who initially refuses, pursue the sisters in one of Murray's vehicles.
Wichita and Little Rock arrive at Pacific Playland and turn on all the rides and lights, attracting nearby zombies. A battle ensues, leaving the sisters trapped on a drop tower ride and running low on ammunition. Tallahassee and Columbus arrive just as the sisters' ammunition is depleted. Tallahassee manages to lure the majority away, then intentionally locks himself in a game booth while Columbus goes after the sisters. Columbus saves the girls and, in thanks, Wichita reveals her real name to him, Krista. The two then share their first kiss. Tallahassee eliminates the remaining zombies single-handedly and finally gets a Twinkie that Little Rock had acquired. As the four leave the park, Columbus realizes that he has a real family at last.

Cast

• Jesse Eisenberg as Columbus
• Woody Harrelson as Tallahassee. He accepted the role on four conditions, two of which were about casting and crew. The third condition required the film to have an environmentally conscious set. The fourth condition required that the director not eat dairy products for a week, a task which Fleischer described was "like for an alcoholic not to drink". He succeeded and maintained a vegan diet for 11 months.^[4]
• Emma Stone as Wichita
• Abigail Breslin as Little Rock
• Amber Heard as 406
• Bill Murray as Himself^[5]
• Derek Graf as Clown Zombie
• Mike White as Gas Station Owner

Themes

The rules

A running gag, and a central theme throughout the film, is the list of rules Columbus comes up with for surviving in the zombie-infested world. By the end of the film, his list has thirty-three rules; only some of them are mentioned. A series of promotional videos starring Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg expanded on the list presented in the film.^[6]

1. "Cardio"^[7]
2. "Double tap"^[8] ("Ziploc bags" in a deleted scene)^[7]
3. "Beware of bathrooms"^[7][9]
4. "Wear seatbelts"^[7]
6. "Cast iron skillet"
7. "Travel light"
8. "Get a kickass partner"
12. "Bounty paper towels"
15. "Bowling Ball"
17. "(Don't) be a hero"^[10]
18. "Limber up"
21. "Avoid strip clubs"
22. "When in doubt, know your way out"
29. "The buddy system"
31. "Check the back seat"^[11]
32. "Enjoy the little things"^[12]
33. "Swiss army knife"
34. "Clean socks"
48. "Hygiene"^[13]

In a deleted scene on the DVD, Columbus presents an alternate rule number 2 titled "Ziploc Bags".^[14]

Character names

The characters do not use each others' real names. Instead, they identify themselves using place names (Columbus, Tallahassee, Wichita, Little Rock) that relate to them. This includes Columbus's neighbor, named 406 after her room, and his fictional sexual conquest: Beverly Hills. There are exceptions; Bill Murray playing himself, and Sister Cynthia Knickerbocker, whom Columbus identifies as a "Zombie Kill of the Week" winner.^[15] At the end of the film, Wichita tells Columbus that her real name is Krista.^[16]

Production

Writing

Writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick stated that idea for Zombieland had "lived in [their] heads" for four-and-a-half years. The story was originally developed in 2005 as a spec script for television pilot in the summer of 2005. Wernick stated "We've got a long brainstorming document that still to this day gets updated on a near-weekly basis with ideas".^[17] Director Ruben Fleischer helped develop the script from a series into a self contained feature by providing a specific destination to the road story, the amusement park.^[4]
Earlier versions of the script called the protagonists Flagstaff and Albuquerque, rather than Columbus and Tallahassee, and the female characters were called Wichita and Stillwater.^[18][19] The celebrity who would cameo as himself was written as a zombified, dancing Patrick Swayze, including references to highlights of Swayze's career, even including a recreation of the "potter's wheel" scene from Ghost.^[18][20] Later versions of the script considered Sylvester Stallone, Joe Pesci, Mark Hamill, Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Bacon, Jean-Claude Van Damme or Matthew McConaughey^[21] as the celebrity, but Bill Murray eventually played the part, most of which was improvised according to Harrelson.^[22]

Filming and design

Principal photography began February 2009 in Hollywood, California with scenes being shot at Scream Fest Theme Park and other locations.^[23] Filming continued in March in Atlanta, Hapeville, Morrow,^[24] Decatur,^[25] Newnan and Powder Springs, Georgia, where actress Abigail Breslin celebrated her 13^th birthday by adopting a shelter puppy.^[26] Zombieland was filmed in digital, using the Panavision Genesis digital camera^[27] and had a 41 day shooting schedule.^[4]
The theme park scenes for the film's climax, Pacific Playland, were mostly shot in Valdosta, Georgia's local theme park Wild Adventures Water and Theme Park.^[23] Some of the rides that were prominently featured within the film includes Pharaoh's Fury (the boat ride the girls get on), the Double Shot (redubbed "Blast Off"), the Rattler (which takes out a small number of zombies following Columbus after he escaped the Haunted House), the Aviator (which is the first ride Tallahassee uses in zombie killing by hanging off of it) and the Bug Out (the second ride, a yellow mini-coaster that Tallahassee rides). Another coaster seen, but not used, is the park's iconic Boomerang roller coaster, which can be seen when the yellow Hummer goes flying off into the lagoon in the middle of the park. A haunted house facade was constructed to match the interior of the haunted house from the Scream Fest Theme Park.^[23]
Special effects makeup designer Tony Gardner, who helped Rick Baker create the signature look of Michael Jackson's music video "Thriller" and has contributed to other Hollywood films like 127 Hours, Hairspray, and There's Something About Mary, was brought on to design the look of the film's zombies.^[28] Michael Bonvillain, who was Cloverfield's cinematographer, was brought on for the "lively" hand-held camerawork.^[29] "Basically, it's the end of the world; the entire nation is zombies", stated Gardner. "And [the humans] are trying to get from the east coast to the west coast". For one shooting scene, Gardner said, "There were 160 zombies, in prosthetics, on set in an amusement park". He said it is "how you present yourself as a zombie that determines how people will react to you" and that "once the contact lenses go in", he thinks "all bets are off".^[28]
Gardner said he was excited about working on the film with first-time filmmaker Ruben Fleischer, who gave him a free rein in his zombie design. "[We] are just trying to be real extreme with it", stated Gardner, "and trying to balance the scares out with the comedy".^[28] He described having to makeover physically attractive actors who usually benefit from their looks as "a little off-putting" after seeing some of them in their character makeup for the first time.^[28]
The zombies in Zombieland were described by the casting director as:

Ferocious, infected people that move erratically. They are diseased, as opposed to undead. These are not the lumbering walking dead of Romero's zombie movies, but instead the super jacked up 28 Days Later/Dawn of the Dead zombies. They are scary, gnarly and gross.^[30]

Harrelson had input into the wardrobe for his character, Tallahassee. "I never worked so long and hard on an outfit in my life," the actor has stated. "What this guy wears is who he is. You want to get a sense of this guy as soon as you see him. So I pick out the necklaces, the sunglasses. But the hat? The minute you see that on Tallahassee, you buy him. He's real. And he's got a real cool hat".^[31] Harrelson's choice of headwear for Tallahassee came not just down to style, but also to his environmental passions: the distinctive hat is handmade in Brazil by a company called The Real Deal using recycled cargo-truck tarps and wire from old truck tires.^[32]
Shortly after finishing the filming of Zombieland, Harrelson had an altercation with a TMZ photographer at New York City's La Guardia Airport. His defense was that he was still in character and thought the cameraman was a zombie.^[33]

Effects

The special effects team worked to create several visual elements. One of these elements is "The Rules for Survival", which appear on-screen as they are related to the audience by Columbus: "Do cardio", "Beware of bathrooms", "Check the back seat", and so forth. The texts are rendered in 3-D. "When a previously stated rule becomes relevant—when nature calls, for instance—the relevant text pops up, occasionally getting splattered with blood."^[34] Slate's Josh Levin said, "The pop-up bit works precisely because Zombieland unspools like a game—how can you survive a zombie horde armed with a shotgun, an SUV, and a smart mouth?"^[34]

Release

Distributed by Columbia Pictures, Zombieland was released on October 2, 2009, a week earlier than originally advertised.^[35]

Home media

Zombieland was released by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment on February 2, 2010 on Blu-Ray Disc and DVD.^[36] The film was released on 15 March 2010 on DVD and Blu-Ray in the UK.^[37] Select Best Buy stores sold a special edition on both DVD and Blu-Ray with an additional disc featuring two featurettes. It was also released as a movie for the PSP UMD movies

Reception

Critical response

The film received critical acclaim. Review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes reports 90% of critics gave the film positive write-ups based on 184 reviews, with a rating of 7.3/10, and a generally positive 88% approval rating from "top" critics based on 29 reviews.^[38] At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews from mainstream critics, the film holds a "generally favorable" score of 73% based on 31 reviews.^[39]
Film critic Roger Ebert was surprised by Zombieland's ability to be significantly humorous while zombies remained the focus of the film and felt that "all of this could have been dreary, but not here. The filmmakers show invention and well-tuned comic timing". He credited Bill Murray's cameo appearance as receiving the "single biggest laugh" of the year, and gave the film 3 out of 4 stars.^[40] Murray's cameo was called out for attention by other reviewers: Marc Savlov of Austin Chronicle credited it as "the single most outrageously entertaining unexpected celebrity cameo of any film—genre or otherwise—" that he had seen in a "long, long time" and that while the film did little to advance the genre, its smart script and high action made it very enjoyable.^[41] He categorized Zombieland as being "dead set against being dead serious" with its tonal pallor "ha[ving] more in common with a foreshortened It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World than with 28 Days or Weeks Later".^[41]
The film's witty use of dialogue and popular culture was also praised by Ty Burr of The Boston Globe, who said the film "makes no claims to greatness" but that what it "has instead—in spades—is deliciously weary end-of-the-world banter";^[42] Michael Ordona of Los Angeles Times praised director Fleischer for "bring[ing] impeccable timing and bloodthirsty wit to the proceedings".^[43]
Some reviewers saw deeper levels in the plot and cinematography: cinematographer Michael Bonvillain was praised for capturing "some interesting images amid the post-apocalyptic carnival of carnage, as when he transforms the destruction of a souvenir shop into a rough ballet",^[43] while Stephanie Zacharek of Salon.com said "the picture is beautifully paced" and highlighted "a halcyon middle section where, in what could be viewed as a sideways homage to Rebel Without a Cause, our rootless wanderers share a brief respite in an empty, lavish mansion".^[44]
Claudia Puig of USA Today said that "underlying the carnage in Zombieland is a sweetly beating heart", and that "This road movie/horror flick/dark comedy/earnest romance/action film hybrid laces a gentle drollness through all the bloody mayhem".^[45] Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwarzbaum concluded, "At the bone, Zombieland is a polished, very funny road picture shaped by wisenheimer cable-TV sensibilities and starring four likable actors, each with an influential following".^[46]
Josh Levin of Slate drew parallels with Adventureland: in both films Jesse Eisenberg tries to win over his dream girl, a girl who has been hardened by life, and both feature a theme park. He goes so far as to call the film "an undead Adventureland—a Pride and Prejudice and Zombies for the Facebook generation".^[34]
Time magazine's Richard Corliss described the film as "an exhilarating ride, start to finish" and reasoned "Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg set a high bar for this subgenre with Shaun of the Dead, but Reese, Werner and Fleischer may have trumped them". "This isn't just a good zombie comedy. It's a damn fine movie, period. And that's high praise, coming from a vampire guy", he stated.^[47]
Not all comparisons with Shaun of the Dead were favorable: Joshua Rothkopf of Time Out New York characterized the "extra injection of pop-culture neuroticism" as "the one innovation" of the film,^[48] declaring that while Zombieland was funny, it wasn't particularly scary and stated that it "simply isn't as witty as Shaun of the Dead, forever the yuks-meet-yucks standard".^[48] Similarly, The Globe and Mail's Rick Groen said "it's far more charming than chilling and way more funny than frightening", though he suggested that Rule No. 32 to 'enjoy the little things' was worth observing for a light comedy.^[49] Manohla Dargis of The New York Times classified the film as "[a] minor diversion dripping in splatter and groaning with self-amusement" and lamented the lack of a real plot more concrete than a series of comedy takes on zombie-slaying.^[50]

Box office

The film debuted at #1 at the box office in North America, with ticket sales of $24,733,155 on the opening weekend, matching its production budget.^[51] As of October 29, 2009, the film grossed $75,590,286 domestically and $102,133,700 worldwide.^[2] It was credited as having the second highest-grossing start on record for a zombie film behind the Dawn of the Dead remake and as "the first [American] horror comedy in recent memory to find significant theatrical success".^[52] The film grossed $60.8 million in 17 days, becoming the top-grossing zombie film in history; the record was previously held by the Dawn of the Dead remake.^[3]

Awards

Awards and nominations
Ceremony	Category	Nominee	Result
Broadcast Film Critics Association[53]	Best Comedy Movie		Nominated
Detroit Film Critics Society[54]	Best Supporting Actor	Woody Harrelson	Nominated
	Best Ensemble	Abigail Breslin Jesse Eisenberg Woody Harrelson Amber Heard Bill Murray Emma Stone
Empire Awards	Best Horror		Nominated
Golden Schmoes[55]	Best Comedy of the Year		Nominated
	Best Horror Movie of the Year		Won
	Biggest Surprise of the Year		Nominated
	Coolest Character of the Year	(Tallahassee)
	Best Action Sequence of the Year	(Tallahassee vs. the Amusement Park)
	Most Memorable Scene of the Year	(Bill Murray Cameo)	Won
	Best T&A of the Year	Emma Stone	Nominated
MTV Movie Awards	Best Scared-As-S**t Performance	Jesse Eisenberg	Nominated
	Best WTF Moment	(Bill Murray?! A Zombie?!)
Saturn Awards	Best Horror Film		Nominated
	Best Supporting Actor	Woody Harrelson
Sitges Film Festival[56]	Audience Award	Ruben Fleischer	Won
Scream Awards	Ultimate Scream		Nominated
	Best Horror Movie		Won
	Best Scream-Play	Rhett Reese Paul Wernick	Nominated
	Best Horror Actress	Emma Stone
	Best Horror Actor	Woody Harrelson
	Best Supporting Actress	Abigail Breslin
	Best Cameo	Bill Murray	Won
	Best Ensemble	Abigail Breslin Jesse Eisenberg Woody Harrelson Amber Heard Bill Murray Emma Stone
	Best F/X		Nominated
St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association	Best Comedy		Nominated
Teen Choice Awards	Choice Movie Actress: Comedy	Emma Stone	Nominated

Sequel

Due to the film's success, writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick have planned a possible sequel, with many more ideas they want to explore. "We would love it, and everybody involved creatively wants to do another one", said Wernick.^[57] "Woody Harrelson came up to us after the final cut of the last scene and gave us a hug and said, 'I've never wanted to do a sequel in the previous movies I've done until this one.'" Wernick said he plans to have Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, and Abigail Breslin to star again with Ruben Fleischer returning as the director and that the writers have "tons of new ideas swimming in [their heads]". Additionally, they want to make the comedy into an enduring franchise. "We would love to do several sequels", stated Wernick. "We would love to also see it on television. It would make a wonderful TV series".^[17]
Though intent on making a sequel for the film, Reese and Wernick have not yet started to work on a script and do not want to reveal any potential Zombieland sequel plot points. They are not planning on an immediate sequel, due to being heavily involved with other writing projects.^[17] The original cast and director are all set to return and Fleischer is enthusiastic about the idea of doing the sequel in 3D.^[58][59] Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg confirmed in February 2010 their return for the second installment of the series.^[60] Fleischer is working on the screenplay and hopes to finish it by late 2010 or early 2011^[61] and the creators have already begun searching for another "superstar cameo".^[62]

References

External links