Paramount Makes Way for Scouts vs. Zombies

Paramount has pushed the release of its “Friday the 13th” reboot eight months, scheduling “Scouts vs. Zombies” for the date previously assigned to the horror flick. “Scouts vs. Zombies” will open March 13 while “Friday the 13th” will now open Nov. 13, 2015.

“Scouts” is a horror comedy about a trio of Boy Scouts who battle zombies in a small town, starring Tye Sheridan, Joey Morgan, Logan Miller and Sarah Dumont. It will open up against Ron Howard's “Heart of the Sea” and Disney's new “Cinderella” movie. It will also open a week before “Insurgent,” the second movie in the young adult franchise.

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Zombies are on Georgia's Yearbook

Yeah, I hear you! How do you even know who would survive that kind of calamity? Zombies are, after all, fictional creatures.

The website Estately came up with a goofy list of 11 key factors that determine what states would hypothetically survive a zombie feeding frenzy, including the state’s number of active military personnel, number of people who know how to use guns, average physical fitness, and obesity rates. When the website applied those factors to each state, Georgia came close to the bottom. On the upside, we still beat New Jersey, Mississippi, New York state and Washington, D.C. A piece of advice here: if you see zombies, run to Alaska! That is the top-rated state to survive the apocalypse. Comedian Rob Cleveland had an explanation for that.

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The Zombies are on their Way

What do zombies, fad diets and Wyoming have in common?

They’re all part of the brainchild “FatEATERS: The Movie” from producer, director, actor and Gillette native Brooke Benson.

The film is a mix of horror and comedy in the popular zombie genre. The movie portrays what happens after a fad diet pill turns consumers into body-conscious cannibals and zombies.

The crew will be in Gillette from May 25-27 at a friend’s house outside of town. They are looking for Wyoming artists to contribute to the soundtrack.

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The Epitome of Zombie Loving Moms

These are all terms frequently used in my house growing up. Questions as to how to survive a zombie invasion or in a post-apocalyptic society would arise during family meals and car rides. My mom is your definitive horror lover, an avid watcher and reader of any and all things that go bump in the night.

Zombies have always been Mom’s favorite; there’s something about these gruesome flesh-eaters that she just loves. But don’t dare ask her to read or watch Game of Thrones — for some reason, that’s “just too much” for her.

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Zombie Apocalypse Plan in Pentagon, But Not Mississippi?

Among things your seventh grader won’t learn in civics this year: The Pentagon has a plan in case of a Zombie Apocalypse.

They really do. This matters to you because last month, an online article ranked Mississippi the second-least prepared place in the country for a Zombie Apocalypse. The same article did not discuss that with Mississippi’s consistently-low educational rankings, the quality of the brains might not be up to par for the food-snobbier zombies.

On Tuesday, Foreign Policy Magazine published an article exposing the fact that the Department of Defense has a response for “counter-zombie dominance” if zombies attacked and the military had to combat them in order to “preserve the sanctity of human life” among all the “non-zombie humans.”

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Birth of the Living Dead in Retrospect

BACK in 1967 a 27-year-old film-maker by the name of George A Romero shot a zombie movie that turned out to be one of the most important horror films ever released.

Night of the Living Dead was culturally, socially and politically relevant and has been the inspiration for a raft of films starring the undead since.

Now we get a glimpse into the mind of the man behind the movie via this highly-illuminating documentary that shows the impact it had back then and is still having 47 years later.

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Zombie Influence from Movies

From its humble beginnings in 1968, the zombie film has flourished into an international phenomenon. In the hands of its inventor George A. Romero, the films were full of social commentary. Whether those themes were racism, consumerism, military infiltration, terrorism, or simply the bleak nihilistic vision of humanity; Romero made his voice heard through the grunt of the undead. Now, the popularity of the sub-genre carries its own commentary about us.

George Romero and John Russo’s partnership took the concept of the controlled undead (akin to voodoo rituals) and placed them at the top of the food chain. Throughout Night, Dawn, Day, Land, Diary, and Survival the closest we come to learning the cause of the epidemic is “a space probe.” This invites our own interpretation, though in the end, it doesn’t matter. Life as we once knew it has ended. Groups of stragglers band together in order to survive the dead and each other. The concept of family is mutated: once your husband, wife, mother, father, brother, sister, son or daughter turns they must be killed again. Governments become obsolete and our primal drives for survival are triggered. This becomes life after the dead have risen.

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So Cal Zombies Want to Go to Prom

Prom is a magical night full of possibilities.  Even if you are a rotting corpse.  The San Diego Zombie Walk, a Southern California tradition that takes place during San Diego Comic Con, is attempting to put together an unforgettable night for its zombie participants by sending them to prom.

For the last eight years Jennifer Muzquiz and her team of undead cohorts have been organizing an annual Zombie Walk that coincides with one of the biggest geek conventions in the U.S.  Participants and onlookers alike come from all around to see people dress up as the undead and parade down the street, doing their best to shamble and moan like a freshly reanimated corpse.  The walk usually ends with an after party where zombie and humans get together to enjoy a few drinks and cut loose.

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Zombies on Mother's Day?

It’s certainly not something my mom would want to do. Or the mom I live with.

But “Zombie Apocalypse” might do the trick for younger mothers badly needing to blow off some steam. And what better way to do it than shooting a zombie in the head?

The 13th Floor San Antonio is making that happen this weekend. The high-tech haunted house located in an old cold storage warehouse at 1203 E. Commerce on the east side of downtown is usually only open around Halloween (imagine that). But 13th Floor will also be open this weekend only to provide what it bills as “heart-bursting horror.”

Here’s how the haunted house was described in a news release:

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Real Life Inspirations of H1Z1 Zombie Game

The level of hype circulating Sony’s upcoming zombie-survival MMO videogame H1Z1 is too damn high, but only a few know that it is based on real-life incidents.

Back in 2009, someone tried to terrorize people by creating a fake BBC site which reported a mutant of H1N1 Swine Flu virus – dubbed as H1Z1 – that caused dead to rise from their graves.
The website reported:

Similar to a scarce originally found in Cambodia back in April, 2005, victims of a new strain of the Swine Flu virus H1N1 have been reported in London.
After death, this virus is able to restart the heart of its victim for up to 2 hours after the initial demise of the person where the individuals behaves in extremely violent ways from what is believe to be a combination of brain damage and a chemical released into blood during ‘resurrection’.

The fake report also had some hyperlinks added in it to enhance its originality. Although the URL of the weblog clearly indicated a fake bouncewithme.co.uk domain, many people fell prey to this joke. It is still not known who pulled off this prank that scared millions of people around the globe, but it was indeed a job well done.

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Humans and Zombies on Live Action Game

This past weekend the campus of Buena Vista University was running with humans and zombies, well, hypothetically that is.

Co-moderator of the game Zachary Schmidt best explains it as "a giant live action game of tag" that lasts all weekend long starting at noon on Friday and finishing Sunday at 6 p.m. with a pizza party. Although, the game is humans versus zombies, it remind Schmidt of cowboys and Indians, a game many people his age played when they were little.

BVU student Ethan Peck loves how it pulls the campus community together.

"One of the best parts of the whole experience has to be the camaraderie and the fact it pulls people together like nothing else on campus really does. A band geek like me can end up with a jock or someone else I normally wouldn't interact with. During that time it doesn't matter who we are," he explains. "At that time we are all humans (or zombies)."

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Undead Awakening: Why Zombies are a Growing Popularity

Why are zombies so popular all of a sudden? It's a question I've been asked a lot in interviews but that rarely seems to get the full attention it deserves.

My smart ass answer is "two words: Brad Pitt." Or, better yet, Norman Reedus, aka Daryl Dixon, whose popularity on AMC's The Walking Dead is so overwhelming (despite his character not existing in the original comic series), that he's spawned a legion of die-hard fans who threaten to literally riot if anything ever happens to him on the show. Considering the way the show has gone the last few seasons, it is plain to see why fans are so concerned. The Walking Dead loses more beloved main characters per season than any other show on television with the exception of the equally blood thirsty Game of Thrones.

But what's the real answer? When you take away the popularity of the television show or having one of the biggest celebrities on the planet make a special effects heavy, bloated-budget horror movie for a summer blockbuster, you still have legions of fans out there hungry to devour anything even remotely zombie related - including undead ice monsters and living cannibal freaks. Some of them even want to become zombies themselves! So what is the appeal, and where does it come from?

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Getting into Zombie Games

Even in video game terms, this week has been chock full of zombie news. Sony and Microsoft, the dueling juggernauts of the console market, both offered up fresh and appropriately gory details about their respective (and exclusive) open-world games about killing the living dead—H1Z1 and State of Decay.

Personally, I'm excited for both games. And there are plenty of other people who are too. Why else would companies of this size risk investing so much to make these things?

Judging by a lot of the chatter I've seen around our coverage, however, I get the sense that there are also a lot of gamers out there who are feeling fatigued by the prospect of spending another console generation shooting at rotting faces. One comment on my H1Z1 post summed up this sentiment nicely: "I'm so done with zombie games. There's been way too many in the last couple of years."



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Zombie Dinosaur: Prehistoric Apocalypse?

This week's writing prompt is simple: write about a zombie dinosaur or dinosaurs. Is it a prehistoric apocalypse? A new Jurassic Park gone wrong? You decide.

This zombie T-Rex is the work of B.R.Guthrie, via r/ImaginaryDinosaurs. Guthrie has written his own bit of prose related to this image, and you can read it over on deviantART. See if you can come up with a zombie dinosaur story and post it in the comments.

Desperate and defeated, Arthur had finally run out of ideas. He'd burned through every creative spark he could scrape from the furnace of his mind in an attempt to get the studio head's attention. All had failed to illicit the even slightest hint of interest from his boss. His painfully short screenwriting career had come to a pitiable end.

"So, that's it then? No other suggestions?" mumbled Mr. Black, still undecided if he wanted ham on rye or soup for lunch.

"Well, yes, unless..." Arthur's mind flailed wildly for something, anything that would keep his writing dreams afloat. "Unless... Zombie...dinosaur?"

Mr. Black stopped chewing on his pen and looked Arthur in the eyes for the first time that morning. Black Studios had found it's new tentpole.

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