Watch: Jane Austen Meets The Undead In The First Trailer For ‘Pride And Prejudice And Zombies’

If you’re looking for a reflexive, self-aware zombie movie—maybe not unlike “Zombieland”—which plays with walking dead tropes, perhaps even acknowledging how absurd zombies within the world of Jane Austen is, you’re looking in the wrong place. “The idea was that it was ‘Pride and Prejudice’ set in this alternate world and then for everyone to play it straight,” Burr Steers (“Igby Goes Down”), the director of “Pride And Prejudice And Zombies” explained to EW. “The movie’s big wink is that there is no big wink.”

The ‘P&P&Z’ version that’s hitting screens next year is vastly different from the many iterations that were once in development. David O. Russell was once going to direct and Natalie Portman was once attached to star (Russell’s script remnants may still make it into the final fabric of the movie).

An adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith’s best-selling book (he also wrote “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”), the movie keeps the same dynamic of a love story between...