Beaten to the Punch

This morning, as I was bumming around the Internet with no real direction, I happened upon Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Yep, it's exactly what it sounds like: Jane Austen's classic romance novel, only now it has flesh-hungry hordes of the undead. I know what you're thinking, because I thought the same thing when I first read that: That. Fucking. Rocks. Seriously, who hasn't had to make the painful trudge through one of Austen's books, and thought to themselves, "This would be so much more fun if some zombies showed up and started gettin' in everybody's business." I would even go so far as to say this recipe could be applied to just about anything you're forced to read in a high-school lit class. Lord of the Flies? Some kids crash land on a deserted island that's not quite as deserted as it seems. You get the breakdown of society and the bestial nature of man themes, plus you wouldn't have to put up with Piggy's bullshit for nearly as long, because he'd be the first to be eaten. Romeo and Juliet? The ending becomes even more tragic, because Romeo gets bitten and becomes a zombie, and Juliet is forced to kill the man she loves with all her heart. Then she vows revenge, and she kills about a thousand more zombies in a bloody, no-holds-barred massacre of the undead. And they say Shakespeare isn't relevant to today's youth.

As I was reading a couple of interviews about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, something in the back of my mind was bothering me. "This all sounds kind of familiar somehow," I thought. Then it dawned on me. The Jane Austen-zombie mash up was so familiar because I had done it before. In 2005, I wrote a synopsis for a movie called Bobby Jones vs. Zombie Jane Austen:

Bobby Jones vs. Zombie Jane Austen is the story of average 10-year old Bobby Jones. When, during a game of home-run derby, a foul ball flies through the window of Bobby's next-door neighbor, evil old woman Esther Wigginsby, she swears revenge. Combining her love for unmitigated evil (Victorian literature) with her twisted necromancy skills, Esther summons from the depths of hell the most terrifying demon/bestselling author in history: Zombie Jane Austen. Unfortunately, Jane Austen is far too corrupt and malicious for Esther to control, and she breaks free of Esther's influence and begins a wave of destruction through the city. The only one who can stop her now is the plucky young lad with the starry look in his eye: Bobby Jones.Bobby organizes a people's militia and leads the battle against Jane Austen, and at first seems successful, but then things take a turn. Since Bobby, as a 10-year old boy, has based his life on fun things, he is susceptible to the evil powers of Zombie Jane Austen (Jane Austen being the natural enemy of fun). The tides turn in the battle however, when Bobby finds Esther's necromancy book and summons the help of Zombie Mark Twain. The two undead writers battle it out in climactic battling-it-out style, until Mark Twain delivers the final blow and sends Jane Austen back to the darkest depths of hell where she belongs. The world celebrates, Bobby Jones is a hero, and people all over Earth are united in the destruction of Jane Austen.

I did it first! They stole my idea! In one of the interviews, they actually use the phrase "zombie Jane Austen." Later in the same interview, they mention a new book soon to be released where Jane Austen becomes a vampire, and over the next 200 years of her life, she settles some scores with other authors. Other authors like Mark Twain?! If that happens, I'm going to sue, I swear to God. Man, this sucks. This is almost as bad as that time Michael Crichton stole my manuscript for Cretaceous Land.