Jane Austen’s Fight Club

The first rule of Fight Club is one never mentions Fight Club. No corsets, no hat pins and no crying.
(Link via The Ampersand)

Previously on Popped Culture...
Medieval Fight Club
Calvin And Hobbes Fight Club
The Breakfast Fight Club

Jane Austen Monster Mashup

"Turn it into a movie and we'll talk," I said two weeks ago about the forthcoming Jane Austen monster mashup Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. The studios were listening. The Sunday Times is reporting that Hollywood big wigs are bidding on the rights to the book and "co-author" Seth Grahame-Smith expects to sign a deal soon.

“It quickly became obvious that Jane [Austen] had laid down the blueprint for a zombie novel,” Grahame-Smith told The Times. “Why else in the original should a regiment arrive on Lizzie Bennet’s doorstep when they should have been off fighting Napoleon? It was to protect the family from an invasion of brain-eaters, obviously.”

This, of course, is a terrible idea, which is why it will most likely be made. “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains,” opens the book, a truism equally applicable to Hollywood executives. Just because everyome on the web is excited about an idea (this author included) doesn't mean anyone will buy it. Snakes On A Plane anyone?

But let's enjoy the insanity while we can. Here is an excerpt from Cinema Suicide, via Austenprose:

“Come, Darcy,” said Mr. Bingley, “I hate to see you standing by yourself in this stupid manner. You had much better dance.”

“I certainly shall not. You know how I detest it.”

“I would not be as fastidious as you are for a kingdom! I never met with so many pleasant girls in my life as I have this evening; and several of them are uncommonly pretty.”

Before Mr. Darcy could respond, a chorus of screams filled the assembly hall, immediately joined by the shattering of window panes. Unmentionables scrambled in, their movements clumsy yet swift; their burial clothing in a range of untidiness.

Guests who had the misfortune of standing near the windows were seized and feasted on at once. Elizabeth watched Mrs. Long struggle to free herself as two female dreadfuls bit into her head, cracking her skull like a walnut, and sending a shower of dark blood spouting as high as the chandeliers.

I imagine it will look a lot like the fine piece of photoshop work above. Billy Connelly makes such a fine zombie. Mmmm, Keira Knightley's brains.

According the The Times, more monster-lit titles are on the way, including a "version of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, where Catherine, the deceased heroine, returns as a Japanese-style ghost not only to haunt but also to terrorize Heathcliff.

In a reworking of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Mr. Rochester has something more terrible than an insane spouse in his attic, and a version of George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss is powered by human sacrifice."

Finally, some accessible literature! Now if someone could rework The Iliad and the Odyssey, I could go back and work on my masters.

Thanks to Kyle for letting me know the madness continues.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

What better way to tell the tales of mannered, eighteenth century English gentry than with a little zombie mayhem? At least that is the thinking of Seth Grahame-Smith, author of the forthcoming Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies features the original text of Jane Austen’s beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life!

Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers— and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead.

I can just imagine it now...

Zombie Mr. Darcy: May I eat your brain, Miss Elizabeth?
Elizabeth Bennet: You may.

Zombie Mr. Darcy: Brains, brains!
Elizabeth Bennet: Sir, I appreciate the struggle you have been through, and I am very sorry to have caused you pain. Believe me, it was unconsciously done.
Zombie Mr. Darcy: Arrrrgh... brains!

This might even get me to pick up a Jane Austen novel, but probably not. Turn it into a movie and we'll talk.

Link via Ampersand

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Update: The Sunday Times is reporting that Hollywood big wigs are bidding on the rights to the book and "co-author" Seth Grahame-Smith expects to sign a deal soon.