These days zombie films are a dime-a-dozen, with more and more going down the comedy route since Shaun of the Dead first paved the way, and showed that there was an audience for such films, back in 2004, but even after it was announced that Tim Burton (Alice in Wonderland), and Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted) were going to produce Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, and that David O’Russell (Three Kings) might be considering making Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, there weren’t many people who guessed that The Beatles would be the next people to get the zombie treatment.
That treatment comes in the form of a film that has recently been optioned by Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher (who have previously brought both Pulp Fiction, and Erin Brockovich, to the screen), and will be based on Alan Goldsher’s book, Paul is Undead: The British Zombie Invasion; which is due to be released this June, and is a book that sees a zombified John Lennon (who has only just had a biopic movie made about him, in the form of Nowhere Boy) killing, and reanimating, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, before the foursome cause worldwide mayhem, have epic fights (which obviously involve dismemberment), murder fans, and even come face-to-face with Yoko Ono:Super-ninja, all whilst being chased by top zombie-hunter Mick Jagger (of The Rolling Stones).
Paul is Undead is still a very long way off production, and it’s not certain that it will ever get that far (or that people would actually want to go and see a film where the zombified carcasses of The Beatles reform the group so that they can get into a special zombie issue of Vogue), but as Stacey Sher says, “how can you not love a book where Jesus agrees with a zombie John Lennon, that The Beatles are, in fact, bigger than him?”
