A few years back, director Ruben Fleischer made his mark with Zombieland, a hilarious take on the zombie comedy starring Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin. Next month, moviegoers will have a chance to see what Fleischer can do with an action comedy sans zombies when his second movie 30 Minutes or Less is released. (Look for some exciting news about that tomorrow.)
ComingSoon.net had a chance to talk with Fleischer about the latter earlier today and inevitably, the topic of doing the sequel Zombieland 2 came up.
Back in September when we spoke to Fleischer on set, he was excited about the script he had read but wasn’t sure if it would be his next project. In June, Fleischer told MTV that there’s a chance of doing the movie following his next movie–more on that below–but then a month later (and just ten day ago) Jesse Eisenberg was doubtful about it, telling UK website Little White Lies:
“They’re writing the script right now but I haven’t seen it and I suspect that the longer we wait, the less relevant it will be. I mean, all the actors would love to do it and the director would love to do it but I’m not sure what’s happening.”
Adding to that is the fact that Emma Stone is now well-committed to the rebooted Spider-Man franchise with next year’s The Amazing Spider-Man and Woody Harrelson has signed to play Haymitch Abernathy in Gary Ross’ The Hunger Games, which we hope will do well enough to lead to at least two more movies.
One might assume those last two things might delay another movie, but we also optimistically reminded ourselves that it was seven years between Alien and Aliens and the same amount of time between The Terminator and its sequel.
“I can promise you it’s something we all want to do,” Fleischer told us when asked about the status of the project. “I think the reality of it happening is getting less and less real. It’s just harder and harder every day, because everybody’s gotten really busy and the reality is that we’ve never had a script that we’ve all just fallen in love with. Until there’s a script that we all can say, ‘This is it,’ it’s more of an idea than an actual thing that we can work towards prioritizing and realizing.”
When we mentioned that the only cast member who might pose some concern about aging is Breslin, who was 12 when she appeared in the zombie road comedy, even that might not be an issue with a movie happening down the road.
“That could be cool and that’s definitely something we’ve talked about,” Fleischer said. “It’s not like it’s going to pick up right where they left off. I think some time passage might be cool.”
Meanwhile, Fleischer is full-on into pre-production for the period gangster flick Gangster Squad for Warner Bros. with a cast that includes Ryan Gosling, Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, Anthony Mackie and more, which is a serious action film about the L.A. authorities fighting the insurgence of organized crime from the East, which may as well be Fleischer’s paying of homage to The Untouchables.
You can look for more on that and the rest of our interview with Reuben, including his revelation of what may be the only franchise he’d be interested in doing, right before 30 Minutes or Less comes out on August 12. Oddly, we’re also chatting with Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling for their new movie Crazy, Stupid, Love. tomorrow so maybe we’ll get some comments from them on the two movies.
