Would Zombieland work as a TV show?

The hit 2009 action comedy, in which Jesse Eisenberg and Emma Stone outrun the walking dead, may find new life on the small screen

Zombieland, the surprise movie hit of 2009, may join "The Walking Dead" and other successful zombie series on the small screen.
(Image credit: Facebook/Zombieland)

Before The Walking Dead was scaring up record ratings for AMC, the 2009 film Zombieland brought the undead to the forefront of pop culture. The action comedy, which starred Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Woody Harrelson, and Abigail Breslin as jaded zombie-apocalypse survivors trekking across America, was a surprise hit. Predictably, talk of a sequel soon followed. But Tuesday news broke that the film's writers are instead doing a TV series adaptation of Zombieland, fast-tracked for a fall 2012 debut. Is the quirky zombie comedy suited for television — or will this just be The Walking Dead with a laugh track?

Zombieland will absolutely work on TV: "This could be a zombie show I could actually get behind," says Jesse Carp at Cinema Blend. It would take the best parts of the still-uneven Walking Dead — "the wonderful makeup effects and zombie kills," for example — and then "ditch the melodrama for a dark comedic edge." It's a combination that's brilliantly suited for the small screen, assuming the actors measure up against the film's original stars.

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