Amazon Studios has supposedly landed the Zombieland TV show originally slated for CBS or FOX.
Although Amazon hasn't announced anything official, a TV show adaption of Zombieland is reportedly in the works as an original series through the company's Amazon Studios arm. Adding to that, casting pages surfaced last week revealing that the four main characters – Tallahassee, Columbus, Wichita and Little Rock – will be the central characters along with two new additions, Fred and Ainsley.
Magazine Broadcast Now (subscription required) is the source behind the Amazon rumor. Prior to that, it was believed a Zombieland TV show would be headed to either CBS or FOX. The Zombieland concept was originally meant to serve as an ongoing serialized comedy adventure before writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick adapted it for the big screen. The Amazon series will reportedly fall back on its roots, comprising of 30-minute episodes.
According to the casting call sheets (meaning Amazon is casting the parts now), newcomers Fred and Ainsley are described as "two office workers at the start of the zombie apocalypse complaining about problems with their iPhones and getting the wrong order at Starbucks." They sound a little oblivious to what's going on around them, not seeing that people are being disemboweled just outside the window they're not facing.
Tallahassee is still a "snarky weirdo" in the TV series, but will have a much less spiky relationship with Columbus. He thinks he wandered aimlessly for so long because he was meant to find and help Columbus and the others. Columbus on the other hand actually tracks down his grandparents, but finds them to be zombified. His dealings with his kiss with Wichita adds to confirmation that Zombieland will not "reboot" in TV form but rather pick up where the four left off in the movie.
As previously stated, Amazon hasn't announced anything official, so there's no indication of when we'll see the first pilot, or if this pilot will go through the same process as other shows in development at Amazon Studios. The company is currently working on six additional comedy pilots including Alpha House, Browsers, Dark Minions, The Onion Presents: The News, Supanatural, and Those Who Can't.
The guy that made the movie approached TV studios with the idea of TV show first, with enough material for several seasons, it was only when they initially rejected the idea (stupidly) that he condensed some material into a movie. Since it was a riotous success and The walking Dead got to the TV spot first (and was also a riotous success) the Zombieland TV series was always going to go back to it's roots. This is not "all we are ging to get" it is what it was originally intended to be. what do you think the whole "Zombie kill of the week" was for, a throwback to original TV scripts.