The Jane Austen classic is being re-written to include zombies.
Jane Austen’s classic novel Pride and Prejudice is being updated as a zombie horror book and film.
A parody of the English novel is due to be published in April under the name Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, with Hollywood studios already bidding to turn the new book into a blockbuster movie.
The new book has been penned by Los Angeles-based TV comedy writer Seth Grahame-Smith, who has been able to update Austen’s original tale because it is out of copyright.
Austen fans are in for a shock, with heroine Elizabeth Bennet and her four sisters becoming zombie slayers and taught how to fight like Japanese ninjas by Mr Darcy.
“It quickly became obvious that Jane (Austen) had laid down the blueprint for a zombie novel,” The Sunday Times quoted Grahame-Smith as saying.
“Why else in the original should a regiment arrive on Lizzie Bennet’s doorstep when they should have been off fighting Napoleon?
“It was to protect the family from an invasion of brain-eaters, obviously.”
Grahame-Smith said about 85 per cent of his novel is Austen’s original text.
“I hated her when I was forced to read Austen in school, but when I started re-reading I realised she was a brutal, but very funny, satirist,” he said.
“I can only aspire to be as mean-spirited as she could be.”
