Corona | Coming Attractions

Director Craig Gillespie has officially exited the production, making him the third director to have done so. According to the outlet that broke the story, Gillespie left the project on amicable terms and over who he believed should be cast in the roles.

Zombieland and Easy A actress Emma Stone has been offered the lead role of Elizabeth Bennet. Stone is currently shooting The Amazing Spider-Man where she's playing the part of the hero's first love, Gwen Stacy.

Craig Gillespie, who directed this summer's upcoming Fright Night remake, has been hired to direct Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

"We are so excited to have Craig Gillespie on board this film," said president of Lionsgate film production Alli Shearmur. "His sensibility spans from genre bending horror to elegant character driven comedy, which is perfect for this movie. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is precisely the kind of movie I came to Lionsgate to make: sophisticated yet youthful and edgy. Our movie will be all of those things – with zombies- and it will benefit enormously from Craig's unique perspective."

The P&P&Z movie has lost its second director. After replacing David O. Russell in the big chair, now it's Mike White who has stood up and vacated his seat. "I loved the project and looked forward to working with Lionsgate. Unfortunately, the timing could not be worked out," said White, referring to the conflict of scheduling between when Pride and Prejudice and Zombies would have filmed and the possible start of planning the second season of his new HBO series Enlightened. "I wish them the best with the movie."

Here's an interesting casting rumor: that Wanted's James McAvoy is being considered for the part of Mr. Darcy and Anne Hathaway (of The Devil Wears Prada) is being considered for Elizabeth Bennett.

Mike White has signed on the dotted line and will direct Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. This will be his second movie as director, with the first being 2007's Year of the Dog.

David O. Russell has departed the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies project in favor of directing the Vince Vaughn drama Old St. Louis. Supposedly the problem was one over Natalie Portman's schedule and not being available for getting the P&P&Z movie rolling before cameras.

According to this site, David O. Russell is directing Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. He's also supposedly adapting the book into the film's screenplay.

Russell's past films include I Heart Huckabees, Three Kings, Flirting With Disaster and the upcoming Mark Wahlberg vehicle The Fighter.

A deal has been reached that will see Natalie Portman star in and produce Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Lionsgate will distribute the movie domestically as well as write the check for its production. Richard Kelly, director of Donnie Darko and The Box, is also one of the film's producers along with Sean McKittrick and Ted Hamm. The actress will play the leading part of Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine at the crux of Jane Austin's romantic-drama (with newly introduced flesh-eaters.)

"Natalie and I are longtime passionate fans of Jane Austen’s books and this a fresh, fun and thought-provoking way to approach her work," said Annette Savitch, the last of the movie's producers and the producing partner with Portman in the duo's production company. "The idea of zombies running rampant in 19th Century England may sound odd, but it lends a modern sense of urgency to a well known love story."

Entertainment Weekly conducted an interview with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies writer Seth Grahame-Smith and asked him what his thoughts were about the recently announced Jane Austin-with-a-twist film project Pride and Predator. His observations:

"I'm very aware of Pride and Predator. After I had turned in the book, I was having a meeting with someone and described Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and he said, 'You know, I think there's a script out there called Pride and Predator.' It had been languishing in development for years or something. And then, of course, we're all excited about the heat and the Internet buzz about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and, lo and behold, Sir Elton swoops in. But I don't feel it lessens our chances. For every Dante's Peak there's a Volcano. For every Step Up there's a Stomp the Yard. I say the more mangling of literary classics the merrier. And it does sound very different. In theirs an alien crash lands and starts picking people off. In ours, there's this zombie onslaught that's been going on for years and Elizabeth Bennett has spent her whole life training to become a highly efficient killer of the undead, as has Darcy. It's more about a love story between two headstrong independent zombie slayers."

Yesterday and via their Twitter feed Production Weekly told its followers that Natalie Portman had suddenly been attached to star in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. The news caused quite a stir among horror and movie sites that follow PW, ourselves included. The site then issued a second Twitter update about their story which now said that the casting of Portman was "premature" and "no other offers have been made."

The Herald Sun newspaper reports that Hollywood studios are sniffing around for the movie rights to Seth Grahame-Smith's forthcoming horror/parody novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. The tome, to be published in April, uses about 85% of Jane Austin's original prose but has been altered to now include a zombie outbreak in Longbourn, the countryside village that's home to Austin's heroine Elizabeth Bennet. In P&P&Z, Grahame-Smith has Elizabeth and her four sisters tutored how to dispose of the walking dead by Mr. Darcy.

"I hated [Jane Austin] when I was forced to read Austen in school, but when I started re-reading I realised she was a brutal, but very funny, satirist," Grahame-Smith told the paper. "I can only aspire to be as mean-spirited as she could be."