The Double Take comic imprint for Take-Two Interactive Software has had a huge success with their ‘Night of the Living Dead‘ spin-off comics and ‘Z-Men’ has just been ordered as a feature film! That’s right, Lionsgate is getting in touch with their undead side by taking up this George A. Romero inspired series. This is the second Take-Two property that Lionsgate has picked up and will have the comic’s author Jeff McComsey also penning the script. While we know that Avi and Ari Arad are working on producing ‘Borderlands’ for the two companies it is unclear if they’ll be tackling this project as well.
In ‘Z-Men’ we follow Stuart and Clancy who are Secret Service under President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration. They are tasked by the President to head over to Pennsylvania and aquire one of the zombies for study. Only what was initially reported as an occasional appearance of one of these undead quickly spirals into the full blown zombie epidemic that we’ve seen our nation fall into in all of Romero’s later films.
As ‘Z-Men’ only has two issues out to date it would be hard to truly say what we’ll be seeing in the film as the series itself hasn’t had time to progress far enough yet to really be fleshed out.
According to Rob Friedman and Patrick Wachsberger who co-chair the studio,
“We’re delighted to expand our relationship with our friends at Take-Two by partnering with their comic book arm, Double Take, in bringing Z-Men to the big screen.”
With the rights for ‘Night of the Living Dead’ having fallen into the public domain one could think of this as a cash grab by the comic publisher but the fact of the matter is the ten titles that they’ve released are all top notch entertainment. The fact that one of the books was picked up for a feature film with how popular zombies still are in today’s culture should come as a surprise to no one.
Especially since they are loosely based off of the film that truly started it all.
What are your thoughts on more zombie films being done? Are you excited about the concept behind ‘Z-Men’? Share your thoughts below!
Sources: Entertainment Weekly, Cinema Blend
