Now that he’s done with Sony’s Venom, director Ruben Fleischer is preparing to start work on the long-awaited Zombieland 2, the sequel to the 2009 horror-comedy that fans have been waiting years for. The best part about it is that it’ll reunite the original foursome of the first film. Namely, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Woody Harrelson and Abigail Breslin.
While speaking with ComicBook.com, Fleischer had a lot to say about the much-anticipated follow-up. As for why it’s finally happening now, the filmmaker explained that it was all down to how much everyone enjoyed working on the original. However, rightly so, the cast held off on committing to a sequel until the script – from Deadpool‘s Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick – was good enough. Now that it finally is though, the project’s ready go.
“I think we all have this honest nostalgia for the experience of making it and with that being said none of them would agree to do the movie until the script was good enough. And we’ve been working on it for four years and have made sure that if we’re gonna do it again it’s at least as good if not better than the original and finally I think we have a script that we all feel really confident in go making and yeah, ’cause it’s such a precious thing none of us want to tarnish its place, we only wanna build upon it.”
As for whether there’ll be more movies after this, Fleischer passed on a great idea Emma Stone had suggested – that the cast and crew come together every decade to make a new installment in the Zombieland franchise.
“Emma said something that just really made me feel so happy the other day which was, ‘We should just make a Zombieland movie every ten years. It should be like Boyhood or something where like every ten years we just make a Zombieland movie as a touchstone and see where these characters are. And I can’t imagine a better way to spend the rest of my life is that every ten years getting to work with that cast.”
Despite how well the central quartet works together, Fleischer admitted that the sequel needed to inject some fresh blood to shake things up, so he’s currently looking to fill a few new roles.
“We’re casting. It can’t just be the same four so we’re right now in the middle of casting the film.”
Finally, there’s one question everyone’s going to be asking about Zombieland 2: how can it top the beloved Bill Murray cameo from the first movie? Fleischer revealed that this challenge has occupied a lot of conversations, but he thinks there’ll be moments in the sequel that at least rival the Ghostbusters star’s iconic guest spot.
“We’ve talked about many different ideas but all I can say is that there’s a scene in this new script that I think will be as memorable, if not more so, than some of the most memorable scenes from the last movie.”
Zombieland 2 is set to go before the cameras in January 2019 ahead of its release on October 11th of that same year, which will make the tenth anniversary of the first film. And as soon as we get any further updates, we’ll be sure to let you know.