Lily James Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Lily James Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Cast: Lily James, Douglas Booth, Lena Headey, Matt Smith, Charles Dance, Suki Waterhouse, Jack Huston, Sam Riley, Bella Heathcote
Director: Burr Steers

Synopsis: Jane Austen's classic tale of the tangled relationships between lovers from different social classes in 19th century England is faced with a new challenge - an army of undead zombies.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Release Date: February 25th, 2016
Website: www.prideprejudicezombiesmovie.com.au

About The Production

A call from actress Natalie Portman started the ball rolling on bringing Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to the big screen. 'We've known each other for a number of years," notes producer Allison Shearmur, 'and she said, -You have to read this book, it's called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.'"

Allison Shearmur wasn't yet aware of the phenomenon Seth Grahame-Smith's novel was to become. 'I thought she was joking," she laughs.

But the book soon picked up strong reviews and became a publishing sensation, finding a comfortable spot on the New York Times bestseller list where it would remain for several months. Finally, Allison Shearmur picked up a copy. 'Natalie was absolutely right about it," Allison Shearmur now admits. 'Seth Grahame-Smith is a very clever man, and he knew the source material back to front. The book resonated with so many people because it doesn't change Pride and Prejudice and it allows you to love it in a different way. It introduces this story to an entirely new generation."

Producer Sean McKittrick was already aboard the production when Allison Shearmur circled back around. 'The book came to me by email, four or five months before publication," he recalls. 'And I saw the cover and I immediately got it. It's a perfect extension of the Austen story, and the zombies become a physical element that amplifies the themes of the original text."

He expands: 'The zombies represent the biggest fears we have, and they're an amplification of the hierarchical themes in Austen's original story, in terms of the class system in Victorian England and the independent woman that Elizabeth Bennet is. While there is some dark humor to the story, we felt that, as with the book, the tone needed to be very serious and direct and respectful to both the original text and the zombie genre. We definitely did NOT want to make a campy version."

Or as the author, Seth Grahame-Smith, described to The Daily Beast, '(In Austen's book) you have this fiercely independent heroine, you have this dashing heroic gentleman, you have a militia camped out for seemingly no reason whatsoever nearby, and people are always walking here and there taking carriage rides here and there. It was just ripe for gore and senseless violence. From my perspective anyway."

Shearmur ran into Burr Steers in Los Angeles one morning and the director of Igby Goes Down told her that she had a project he was interested in. 'I was wracking my brain, knowing the kinds of movies Burr Steers makes, and thinking, -Which script is Burr Steers interested in?' He cut me off and said, -Pride and Prejudice and Zombies."

'He said, -I know exactly how to do it,'" Shearmur remembers. 'And when a person with that level of talent says to you that they know how to do something that could be quite tonally difficult, I had to listen."

Producer, Marc Butan took the film out of turnaround from Lions Gate and made the final decision to hire Steers over half a dozen others.

'Every pitch we heard on how to adapt the book into a script focused on horror, special effects and new ways to crate zombie mayhem," Butan recalls. 'Burr Steers was the only person to recognise that the zombies in the period setting made the movie fun, fresh and original, but the film's greatest strength was with its original source material - -Pride &Prejudice'. His faithfulness to Austen's novel was the key."

With Shearmur, Butan oversaw the development of the script, packaged it and took it to Cannes to put the movie together. He then sold the US rights to Cross Creek Pictures producer, Brian Oliver, who was previously a producer on the Academy Award® nominated Black Swan. Brian Oliver came on board because he was attracted to Steers' vision of the book, which he had read many years before.

'I felt the book from page one of reading it, and Burr Steers's take on it had the right combination of action and romance while encompassing the themes of Jane Austen's novel. He brought his wit and youthfulness to the project. It was his idea to play it straight and laugh with the characters and not at the characters," Brian Oliver notes.

Steers understands the perception that touching a classic could be considered sacrilege. 'But we have all of the Pride and Prejudice beats in this movie," he insists.

'It's just set in this alternate world where the zombie apocalypse is taking place, as opposed to the Napoleonic Wars."

'The themes of wealth and marriage translate well and the zombies were a good replacement for the lower class and the war with the Zombies replace the Napoleonic wars well," adds Brian Oliver.

Independent of this project, Steers had done his own zombie research and coupled with his affection for the Austen source material and Grahame-Smith's novel, he had a singular and informed vision of how to approach the movie. He had been working on a movie that took place in Haiti and had extensively studied such things as the Tonton Macoutes, a mythical Creole bogeyman who kidnapped children and later corrupt dictator Francois 'Papa Doc" Duvalier's fearsome paramilitary force took the same name and some of the same tactics '… to freak out the natives during the Haitian genocide. I also looked at Baron Samedi/Saturday, the relation to European lore. So I was aware there could be a different take on it and as Seth proved, -Jane Austen' was a perfect template."

Shearmur recalls reading Steers' first draft of the screenplay. 'You could tell a director was writing," she remembers. 'It was very specific in terms of shots, and it's tonally perfect. It's scary, it's romantic, it's funny and he didn't leave one of the subplots on the floor. He even managed to have Darcy go and make a proper woman of Lydia. All the while creating some super badass zombie killers while staying true to the original characters."

Steers' main instinct was the fundamental truth of cinema that is: Pride and Prejudice always works. 'Look at the Bridget Jones franchise," he says. 'As much Pride and Prejudice as you can put into something, that's always a good bet."

Adding the zombie element on top was like icing the cake. 'The idea is that this pandemic started in the early 1700s," notes Steers. 'I used the Black Plague as a model, and that was also how I thought of everybody moving out of London and getting this distance between themselves and the infected in the capital."

He continues: 'The 1700s also marked the age of industrialisation, and that is happening alongside this pandemic, so you have these giant steam engines created to destroy zombies. I don't want to say -steam punk', but there is an element of that to this."

Kitsch was definitely NOT a welcome element. 'There's that horrible phrase, I didn't want it to be that in any way," Steers says. 'We have all these different genres and we attempted to do all of them justice, as well as we possibly could and blend them together in a coherent world. And, weirdly, it is. It all fits together. You take the Napoleonic Wars out, and put the zombie apocalypse in, and everything else still plays."

Martial Artists: Casting Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
The casting of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies represents an eclectic ensemble of high caliber talent that offer a new ferociously subversive side to the prodigiously talented Bennet sisters, as they use their martial arts training to take down the zombie hordes. 'When you have a book this popular and you're making a genre movie you can smuggle certain things into it," notes Steers. 'It gives you a license to cast people that you might not be able to if you didn't have the power of genre opening it up, or a wellknown title."

Lily James plays the lead role of Elizabeth Bennet, one of literature's best-known and best-loved heroines. Lily James already had experience as a forward-thinking young lady cast in a period drama, as the feisty Lady Rose MacClare Aldridge on Downton Abbey. As the titular star of Disney's 2015 live-action retelling of Cinderella, she also had the opportunity to both honor and reinvent a classic character in a contemporary way.

Both roles are kindred spirits to Elizabeth Bennet.

Lily James read the screenplay and fell for it after just seven pages. 'It was so well written, and Burr Steers has done a great job with it," she notes. 'I loved it. Pride and Prejudice has been done so many times, and so successfully, that I think I'd never attempt it, but when you add zombies it becomes an interesting challenge and we've all embraced it together."

'Aside from being an incredibly strong technical actress," notes Steers, 'Lily Lily James is filled with passion and is just so charismatic in front of the camera."

Lily James knew the Austen novel well, since first reading it in school. This added a level of challenge for the actress. 'My main struggle throughout the shoot has been marrying the Liz Bennet that I'm so familiar with and this version of the martial artist, Elizabeth Bennet."

In fact, occasionally Lily James eschewed Austen's Elizabeth Bennet entirely for the sword-wielding, roundhouse kicking zombie nemesis Liz Bennet.

'I tried to stay faithful to Jane Austen's character but at times I had to let it go because Liz is a lot fiercer, at an angrier place in her life and well, more badass. The story starts identically – living at home with her mum and dad, all the girls unmarried, struggling with the issues they did back then which was unless they were married off they were potentially penniless – except with the the threat of zombies, a war, total annihilation as the backdrop. Lizzie is so multidimensional and so wonderfully flawed and beautifully intelligent and ahead of her time, and playing that is already a huge challenge. Add to that the fact that there are zombies running around…"

Her great love and foil, Mr. Darcy is played by Sam Riley, who recently played Diaval in Maleficent and so certainly knew a thing or two about playing opposite powerful, complicated female characters.

'I'd wanted to work with Sam Riley for years," notes Steers, simply. 'Ever since I saw Control, I've tried to get projects going with him. If you're going to have to do some work to dispel the ghosts of previous Mr. Darcys, he was the guy to do it." When Riley heard about the project, he hadn't been aware of the book, and his initial reaction was one of surprise. 'I thought, -Are things going that badly?'" he laughs.

But despite the obvious humor of the title, he soon embraced Grahame-Smtih's attention to detail and seriousness in making the melange succeed. 'When I picked it up, I read it from cover to cover in a single sitting. That's pretty rare, because usually after 10 or 15 pages you know whether you're interested or not. I put it down and immediately called my agent to set up a meeting. Playing Mr Darcy as a Samurai sword-wielding zombie killer… What's not to like, really?"

Riley's inspiration for his Darcy was exactly what Steers wanted. 'He said, -I'm going to play it like a punk James Bond,'" laughs the director. 'And he really did approach it that way."

'Tonally he's more forceful than the book's Darcy," notes McKittrick. 'He's not a playful Darcy, but the book's themes still run through him."

'What really appealed to me was playing this iconic character as an action hero," continues Riley. 'I've played a lot of serious roles in the past, and we're playing this quite straight, but the idea of admiring Liz Bennet at a distance while whacking a zombie in the head and running him through was amazing."

'I can't imagine anyone else playing Darcy now," says James. 'He's just perfect, because he's kept the qualities of Darcy – the brooding, internal sort of thing where you just long to know what he's really thinking – but then you see him fight and it makes it much sexier. The tension between Liz and Darcy is escalated tenfold by the fact they're able to take it out on each other physically."

Bella Heathcote describes herself as a steadfast Jane Austen fan. 'I was moderately obsessed with the BBC miniseries," she confesses. 'And so that's where it all started for me."

She went back to the book when she was cast as Jane Bennet, but put it down in favor of the screenplay. 'There's a point in our story where there's a big digression obviously, but Jane is one and the same with the character in Austen's book; the circumstance of her world is slightly different and certainly more lethal," she explains. 'She's more than prepared for it - in this version there's been a zombie apocalypse and she's gone to China with her sisters to study martial arts. It's a sign of their times: in addition to painting and singing and sewing and all the skills women had to have back then, they also know how to fight."
In true Jane fashion, Heathcote spent three months learning Kung Fu before she even arrived on set. 'I got really into it," she confesses. 'I did that, with a bit of boxing, and then I mostly threw myself into it when I got to set."

Suki Waterhouse, who starred in 2015 young adult hit Insurgent, plays Kitty Bennet, who absolutely falls for the wrong guy with disastrous consequences. 'She's the second youngest sister," notes Waterhouse. 'She's the quiet one, and perhaps not the brightest Bennet in the box, I'm afraid."

Joining the ensemble has been a tremendous learning experience for the young actress. 'I've learnt so much from just watching actors like Sally Phillips, who plays our mum. She can make us laugh so much before she's even said anything and it's just the way her brain works."

Waterhouse grew up practicing karate – her father taught at the local center – and the fight sequences definitely attracted her from the start.

'The title of the movie alone made me want to do it! And then the script was so entertaining. I put myself on tape for the audition and threw in loads of karate moves. I was a bit of a show off I have to say," says Waterhouse.

Still the action sequences were challenging for her but definitely fun – and earned Waterhouse her first movie wound.

'The fight scenes were not a walk in the park, and had quite intricate choreography. We got loads of bruises. I was really impressed with mine. Literally, I wanted to frame and laminate my first one," she says.

Playing the part of the snobbish Bingley is Douglas Booth. 'He's this very wealthy aristocrat who moves into Netherfield and causes a great hysteria amongst the Bennet sisters," he notes. 'He's also Darcy's best friend, but he and Darcy are so different."

Booth thinks this difference is reflected in his relationship with Sam Riley. 'Sam and me are quite different people," he explains. 'But we get along so well, and so do Bingley and Darcy. He's everything Darcy isn't. He's the one that's always joking, he wants to have fun and he'll be the last man standing at the bar. Darcy's very caged and protected and introverted in a way."

Booth was attracted to the film's unique twist on the Austen classic. 'Austen's work was always social commentary," he says. 'And that's the same here, but rather than discussing it over knitting they're discussing it over battle. It's fascinating and it's what I really loved about it."

He continues: 'What's interesting is that in other zombie films it's often a journey: a hero trying to get from A to B to save his family. But here you have a really different setup, where you're placing a world that we think we know into the middle of a zombie apocalypse and seeing how that world would survive."

Agrees Jack Huston, who plays Wickham: 'It stays so very true to the structure of the Austen story. But the zombie part adds a new element. You don't really need to see another version of Pride and Prejudice because they've been so many and they've been so good, but Seth Grahame-Smith wrote this incredible book that brought something new to it. It gives us license to open it up and do different things especially in terms of the women. I just love that these girls are progressive and ballsy. Liz Bennet was in fact very outspoken and forward thinking in the novel but in our movie we get to push that even further. There's something really sexy about these women as kickass warriors," Huston notes.

The Victorian social stratification is translated into a zombie paradigm, of which Wickham is painfully aware.

'After the outbreak of the undead, the world changed dramatically – the upper class managed to sort of section themselves off – Lady Catherine calls them zombie aristocrats - but a strange sort of class system results. Wickham's idea is to create some sort of appeasement so that humans and zombies can live together but his motives, as we soon find out, are less than altruistic," Huston says.

Lena Headey joins her Game of Thrones co-star Charles Dance in the film, taking on the role of Catherine de Bourgh.

'She's Darcy's auntie and she's rich, a bit naughty and a bit of a warrior who has killed many zombies," notes Headey, who says her attraction to the role was the freedom to do something that hadn't been seen before.

'I'm at an age where I'm allowed to do slightly bonkers things," she laughs. 'This was something I loved the idea of. The way she's introduced – standing on a pile of dead zombies with two swords in her hands and thunder and lightning going off… it's kind of brilliant. Who wouldn't want that? And, frankly, I'd wanted to wear an eye patch for 20 years. I'm living my dream."

Matt Smith plays Parson Collins. He describes the moment he first heard the film's title and pitch: 'As with everything, your agent rings you up, sends you a script and goes, -They're making this, and this is the cast.' And they go, -It's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. So you go, -Right, OK.'"

He continues: 'But actually, for me, exactly what Pride and Prejudice needs are zombies. I don't want to go and watch another adaptation of Pride and Prejudice for three hours, thanks. But zombies? I'll take a look at that."

It was this joyous embrace of the premise that made Smith a valuable addition to the ensemble. 'Matt Smith's not just a great actor," notes Riley, 'but a great person to have around on set. He keeps everybody in high spirits and he's hilarious in what he's doing."

'Parson Collins is a man of pomposity and pride, I suppose," notes Smith of his character. 'I wanted to something slightly different with him and I think, when people watch the film, maybe they'll recognize a different aspect to him."

Smith notes that Steers encouraged improvisation, which he found as liberating as the actual script.

'He gave me a lot of free reign, allowed me to play with the takes which I always like and especially because there is a slightly fantastical element to this world, that approach allows you to be slightly bolder," Smith explains.

Charles Dance plays the Bennet family patriarch, Mr. Bennet. 'Charles has this quiet intensity as Mr. Bennet," notes James. 'You felt this quite protective, fierce quality to him which was really interesting."

Says Dance: 'I think even the most protective of Jane Austen fans will get the joke, actually. And I hope they do because we've all had an awful lot of fun on this film. Probably too much fun."

His Mr. Bennet is, he says, 'a little more proactive," than the book. 'My take on it was that Mr. Bennet is in this house full of women, surrounded by daughters, and because of this zombie plague happening in England he's had them all trained up as though they were boys, to become great fighters. So although he's patriarchal and cynical in the story, he is most of the time reactive and it's Mrs. Bennet who makes the most noise." 13

He describes the film's pitch as 'audacious, to say the least." He continues: 'I'm surrounded by this phenomenal cast of bright young things and it's all rooted in the story.

It's just that we have the Bennet girls sitting around practicing their needlepoint after returning from Shaolin temples in China and becoming martial arts experts. It's very, very funny, though we tried not to play it as a comedy, because all the best comedies are played straight."

Steers notes how perfectly the ensemble gathered. 'They all drew off each other and they all wanted to work together," he says. 'They push each other and they're incredibly supportive of each other, with a healthy competitiveness. They're a great young generation of British stars, who are all on the cusp of being stars, if they're not there already."

Fighting the Virus: The Action of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

As in the novel, the Bennet sisters and Darcy use Eastern fighting styles to combat the zombie invasion. 'England was already in Asia at this point in history," notes Steers. 'They were already on the Silk Road and, obviously, things that were once very Asian became English. Tea, gunpowder and things like that became very much integrated into English culture. Our idea is that, with this war going on, they've also integrated martial arts."

The fighting, Steers says, comes from the characters, in the manner of the great Eastern martial arts films like Seven Samurai. 'They each have very specific skills based on who they are, and it's not at all random."

It was Grahame-Smith's idea in the novel to use the varied histories of the East to highlight societal differences between the characters. Japan, at the time, was the preserve of the upper classes; so Japanese fighting styles seemed especially fitting for the wellheeled world the Bennets are struggling to mix in. 'Japan is Eton and China is the lesser, and the Bennets have gone to China," Steers explains. 'So the snobbery of the Bingleys is that they don't have the right pedigree. These are all things that play into Jane Austen's themes, and they explore the idea of gender roles and young, female empowerment."

'They're slightly out-there," says Lily James. 'They're the rogue kids for training in China and this snobbishness comes into play with Bingley. There's a funny battle between me and Caroline Bingley, where I speak Chinese and she speaks Japanese."

Despite some class-based snobbery, the girls really do know their stuff when it comes to fighting. 'They're basically martial arts heroes," says James. 'We had to do a lot of training with Maurice Lee, the stunt coordinator, to try and look like we knew how to hold a sword. And I think we all embraced it fully and became martial artists." Says Lee: 'It's not every day you get a Kung Fu film with all the different styles in it within the UK. I definitely wanted to be a part of this."

Lee is a former fighter who did boxing, kickboxing, and Kung Fu, amongst other disciplines. This made him uniquely placed to train the Chinese-inspired Bennet sisters in their techniques.

'The main thing about choreographing this film is knowing the script and knowing the characters," he explains. 'The style has to match the storyline. How would these characters react to the situations they're faced with?"

For Riley, training for the physical rigours of the role was a big challenge. 'I'd done no sport for two years before I read this," he recalls with a wince. 'When I saw what I had to do I was thinking, -If I go at this now they're going to keep needing to give me 10 minute breaks while I get my breath back.' So as soon as I got the part I rang my trainer."

Learning to wield a Samurai sword wasn't easy for Riley. 'You can't become a Samurai in a month," he laughs. 'But I thought if I learnt a few things that make me look like a Samurai, like spinning the sword and sheathing it without looking, I'd get away with it. I have this Samurai sword at home but I keep stabbing myself in the thumb with it. But it looks good on camera."

Amongst the challenges that were particular to this film was a sparring scene between Lizzie and Darcy in which the two have to continue a conversation touching on the Austen novel's plot. 'For an actor, costume drama dialogue is hard enough," explains Riley, 'And when Lily and I were learning the fight, all the while we're thinking, -I can't believe we're going to have to talk through this.' But in a way it enabled you to say the lines without chewing over them, because you have to say them in between her giving you a right hook and kneecapping you with a poker. It was craziness."

Agrees James: 'Inevitably the dialogue comes out in a way you can't control, and if you're fighting your dialogue reflects that – it's angry. In the end you really do stop thinking about what you're saying, which is a relief, as an actor, because stuff is just happening automatically."

Says James of the formidable Bennet sisters of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: 'When we're together it's like we're this girl band. I feel like we're the Spice Girls, but we can fight and we're the ones that rescue the men. We're the strong characters. It's been really bonding for us to play."

'The scariest thing is we did shoot shotguns," laughs Suki Waterhouse, who plays Kitty. 'Me, Lily and Ellie Bamber, who plays Lydia, shot shotgun blanks and it was quite scary. But good fun."

The actress admires the clever mix between the girls' fighting talents and the social realities of the time they live in. 'They're not sitting around and they're quite preoccupied by the zombie masses," she notes, 'but they're also constrained by needing to get married, which is really clever. It's still Pride and Prejudice at its core."

Battle Grounds: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies On Location

Designing studio sets and dressing the locations was the job of the film's art department, led by production designer Dave Warren. Says Shearmur: 'Dave worked with Dante Ferretti for many years, and he has such an eye for excellent craftsmanship. His set decorator, Naomi Moore, has a real knowledge and priority of detail. I was flattered when a group of press asked how much the film cost, and when I turned the question around on them they named a budget three and a half times the size of our budget."

'Burr Steers and Dave spent a lot of time figuring out what this world would look like," says McKittrick, 'after 70 years of a zombie war. The world still exists, and grand estates still exist, but as you pull deeper away from the estates, you see the zombie fortifications and you see how society has adapted to live in a world where zombies exist."

Explains Lily James: 'In between London and Hertfordshire, in our story, there's huge area called -The In Between', which is a sort of post-apocalypse dead zone where there are still zombies. Hertforshire and London are protected, but as the film starts the zombies have infiltrated Hertfordshire and we're at war."

'It's wartime so everyone's sort of hardened to that," notes Riley. 'I wanted Darcy to have as many toys as possible. My horse has custom-made armours and a double-barrelled flintlock pistol with a little D underneath, which was a nice touch. I've got knives secreted in my boots and under my sleeves, and then the Samurai sword and an axe. Just the essentials."

So shooting at some of Britain's most historic country estates also meant adapting them for an alternative history in which they made perfect defences against the zombie scourge. 'It was about looking at them and figuring out how to alter them to fit into our world," says Steers. 'But the architecture in these places… -palatial' is an understatement."

'99% of the film is on location," notes Warren. 'Burr Steers and Remi had been looking at English cinema of the 1970s, and in a way they quite liked the constraints of films shot on location. You see it on screen – the camera might be constricted sometimes, but the windows are right and everything's real and the sunshine is beating down. I think they both quite liked that."

'Being based in London," notes McKittrick, 'and having all the estates that still stand today, and being able to shoot Pride and Prejudice and Zombies in centuries-old estates… I never pictured us being able to have access to anything like we've managed."

Through the lens of director of photography Remi Adefarasin, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies has all the stunning visual language of great period drama.

'Remi used so many practical candles on set," notes Shearmur. 'You can't help but think of your favourite scenes in Barry Lyndon."

'Remi said early on that he was going to shoot the most beautiful zombie film ever shot," says McKittrick. 'It's stunning, and everything you would expect visually in a Merchant/Ivory film."

Riley agrees. 'It's not that Remi's selling the gag," he notes. 'It's that he's preventing it from being a gag, because it's being shot as beautiful as any other adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. It's allowing the novel and the genre elements to sit with one another without being completely jarring."

She continues: 'It will look gorgeous, handsome, sumptuous, rich, and if you look closely, you'll see a lot of Asian detail. By the second or third viewing you'll learn so much about our characters by the way the room has been dressed. It's very clever and very witty."

McKittrick notes that Steers ran a very calm set. 'Burr Steers was an actor, so he's definitely an actors' director," he says. 'He's a stand-up, nice, sweet guy who knows what he wants, and the cast and crew love him for it."

'Burr Steers got us all together for rehearsals and took us out for beers," notes James. 'I soon realised that this bonding process was so important. Especially for us sisters, it meant our vibe together became really automatic. Burr Steers was brilliant."

'With a name like that he should be the drummer in a punk band or something," jokes Riley of his director. 'He's brilliant, and it was great to have that two weeks' rehearsal with him, which is such a rare thing. Just to be able to sit down and talk about how we're positioning ourselves so we're on the same page."

Creating the Zombies

Academy Award® winning prosthetics make-up designer Mark Coulier was responsible for bringing the zombies … well, not exactly to life.

'My initial conversations with Burr Steers gave us our direction – we're always looking for that little nugget of information. Burr Steers wanted to keep everything very real so we had little bits of bone sticking out here and there, jawlines with teeth showing, all that Burr Steers really liked the character of Jack in American Werewolf in London who gets more degraded by the end of the film. So we did that using more blue-green colors and sort of hanging flaps of skin. It was great fun to mix those lovely 18th century costumes, hairdos and bonnets with half a face," Coulier says.

Coulier's team also designed and maintained the zombie hordes that menace the English countryside.

'We spent several months prepping for that, churning out thousands of prosthetic pieces. We devised them so they were adaptable and we were able to apply them on various people, you knew they would fit in some way. So on days there were 40 zombies, we have about 30 people from my department turning them into zombies and they'd be busy for four hours just getting them prepped. And then we'd have people on set applying blood and goop, which required constant maintenance because the make-up rubs off. We had lots of severed and torn body parts and made about 20 or 30 bodies that got thrown around here and there. We had special zombies like the one with an axe in his head, orphan zombies, all in all very creepy," Coulier says.

Coulier's team worked closely with the production, costume, hair and make-up departments to devise a ghoulish color scheme in sync with the movie as a whole. 'We all discussed the color palette – we knew what costume was doing with the colors and tried to complement it in our zombies. For instance, we had one actress with this beautiful porcelain skin and ginger hair and costume gave her this beautiful pale blue dress. I just kept the toned muted and played with those amazing blues and greens and yellows and browns in her rotting zombie skin," Coulier says.

Coulier has experience with zombies, notably World War Z, but this film had a unique appeal. 'A period zombie film sounded fantastic. We had license to be a little more character-driven, to take the whole image of Victorian England and mix it with that zombie culture was different and great fun," Coulier says.

In the end, Burr Steers Steers says Pride and Prejudice and Zombies offers something for everyone. 'For the horror fans, there is real horror; real, frightening zombies, and I think even more subversive and aberrant than things you've seen before because they can think." And for fans of Pride and Prejudice, all of this is set against the backdrop of one of literature's most beloved love stories. Steers continues: 'It raises the stakes of everything. All of Jane Austen's themes are ramped up as the characters fight off the zombie apocalypse."

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Release Date: February 25th, 2016