It seems that producers for the planned adaption of Seth Grahame-Smith’s novel Pride & Prejudice & Zombies can’t catch a break. When they aren’t trying to keep a director on the project, they’ve been unsuccessfully out trying to court an actress to play the lead role. Today, the latest actress to turn them down is Blake Lively. She joins a list of actresses that include Scarlett Johansson, Emma Stone, Anne Hathaway, Mia Wasikowska, and Natalie Portman.
Let’s face it, this is not a good sign. Cycling through a number of A-list actresses and now starting to move into the upper reaches of the B-list where Lively resides is starting to give the project a bit of a stink that will make it even harder to land someone in the role. Compounding the problem is that current director Craig Gillespie is not the first to occupy that position, notably replacing Mike White who succeeded David O. Russell.
The only way that I see this film getting some traction towards getting made is if Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, an adaption of the novel also be Grahame-Smith, does well when it gets released next year. If that makes some money at the box office, I would expect everyone would suddenly want to be in the monster mash-up business.
