Those readers of a certain age (and certain predilection) will no doubt fondly remember the game Zombies Ate My Neighbors, one of the unsung greats for Super Nintendo (and Sega Mega Drive/Sega Genesis). For those unfamiliar, the game’s premise is simple: you’re a teenager and monstergeddon has hit your neighborhood. Now you gotta clean up. As you navigate your suburban sprawl, spooky castles, and haunted pyramids, you face a bevy of creatures, from vampires, to werewolves, to giant babies, and of course, to zombies. The game had a great two player mode, and I loved that you needed certain weapons to kill certain monsters (kitchen silverware for werewolves, etc). The game had a fun sense of humor, and as a childhood monster buff, I obviously loved the overall homage to classic horror. Also, it was released 1993, one year before the ESRB rating system started, so parents were woefully unaware of the carnage they were letting us young’uns wallow in.
Now FirstShowing is reporting that noob screenwriter John Darko is close to securing financing for the project which FirstShowing describes thusly:
“[ZAMN] can essentially be described as John Hughes meets Judd Apatow meets George A. Romero… The film borrows a bit from the video game, but is primarily its own coming-of-age high school story. Though rest assured, Zeke and Julie from the game will be in this.“
FirstShowing also notes the Darko and his producing cohorts, April Wade and Ahmed al Baker, are still securing the rights, which is never a great sign. So it is quite possible this film will die on the vine, or wind up dropping the Zombies Ate My Neighbors tie-in altogether. No one involved with this project gives me any reason to presume that the film will turn out good, but the idea of doing a monster filled horror-comedy (ie, not just zombies), certainly has its possibilities.
Either way, I suddenly feel the urge to dig my SNES out of storage.