For a while, it looked like it might never happen, but Zombieland: Double Tap finally hits cinemas this week and has already picked up a slew of positive reviews. But as good as the movie seems to be, it may have been even better if they’d have gone ahead with a proposed crossover with The Walking Dead.
Of course, despite both being in the same post-apocalyptic zombie genre, their tones couldn’t be more different. Zombieland is irreverent and fun, while The Walking Dead is serious and extremely grim. But, for a brief shining moment, it appeared the two worlds could indeed intersect.
Director Ruben Fleischer mentioned the idea in an interview with Uproxx, saying:
Emma had a funny idea that as our heroes are kind of making their way through the post-apocalyptic landscape, they come across, just in passing, some members of the cast of the Walking Dead. But we never were able to make that happen.
Despite this, we know that Double Tap does feature a Walking Dead homage. You can check it out in the TV spot, where we see Jesse Eisenberg reading an issue of the comic and pronouncing it “terrifying, but totally unrealistic.”
Could The Walking Dead and Zombieland reasonably exist in the same universe, though? They do share some obvious similarities: blocked highways, small groups of survivors trying to get by and the general ruinous state of the world. But, perhaps the biggest difference comes in the type of zombies seen in each.
The Walking Dead features your traditional shambling corpses, while Zombieland gives us ‘fast zombies,’ so Eisenberg is quite right when judging it as unrealistic from his point of view. However, as Zombieland has never taken itself particularly seriously, I’m sure they could’ve made this crossover work.
But Fleischer has the last word, saying:
I think the comic book nod is probably a better acknowledgement. Might start to get a little Scooby-Doo, like the Harlem Globetrotters showing up.
Zombieland: Double Tap hits theaters tomorrow, October 18th.