For those of you that have ever longed for the day that great literary characters like Mr. Darcy would have their asses blown away by aliens, that dream has been finally been realized. Doesn’t it figure that Elton John would somehow be involved?
John’s Rocket Pictures is launching “Pride and Predator,” the Jane Austen adaption “which veers from the traditional period costume drama when an alien crash lands and begins to butcher the mannered protags, who suddenly have more than marriage and inheritance to worry about,” according to Variety.
Will Clark, who helmed the award-winning short “The Amazing Trousers,” will direct. Clark also helped write the script with Andrew Kemble and John Pape. “It felt like a fresh and funny way to blow apart the done-to-death Jane Austen genre by literally dropping this alien into the middle of a costume drama, where he stalks and slashes to horrific effect,” David Furnish said. Translation: we were fresh out of good ideas, but we figured, add aliens and everything’s cool! Elton John will also supervise the music for the film, as he does for every Rocket production… fun times.
Everyone seems to be jumping on the “subverting Jane Austen” bandwagon of late. Related news comes from Production Weekly‘s Twitter feed. Apparently, starlet Natalie Portman has signed on to a similar project; the adaptation of Grahame-Smith’s novel “Pride and Prejudice & Zombies,” which is saracstic social commentary tea and crumpets time with a zombie twist. How novel.
Not so fast, the owners of all things horror, Shlock Til You Drop claim, it’s “premature” to say Portman has already been cast. Whatever, let’s face it, more people recycling great stories for their ironic genre agendas. We’re not impressed.
