Much as Amazon’s recent, egalitarian open call for new TV show ideas totally serendipitously led it to established professionals, the site’s first genuine foray into providing original content may be Zombieland, the TV version of the hit 2009 movie that’s already passed through several networks over the past eight years. Rumors of Amazon’s interest in Zombieland ramped up earlier this week, with the leak of these casting sheets for the prospective half-hour comedy. Now Deadline is reporting that Eli Craig—director of Tucker And Dale Vs. Evil, which similarly juggled gore, slapstick, and ironic detachment—is in talks to helm the series from original writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick and producer Gavin Polone, who have been pushing to make a Zombieland TV show since at least 2005, back when networks were all like, “We dig the dead people, but where’s the hot chick who talks to ‘em?” while snapping their old-timey suspenders.
Since then, CBS, Syfy, and Fox have all considered and then passed on/remembered that they were Syfy and could not afford Zombieland, leaving it wide open for Amazon to add it to its wish list. There it can be reminded that people who bought a Zombieland TV show also purchased the onus of fulfilling the expectations of a naturally skeptical fanbase as the first test of their new venture’s viability, as well as, for some reason, Gone Girl.