Pride & Prejudice & Zombies Director Burr Steers Talks Austen Adaptation

Before Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, director Burr Steer was best known for teen-geared dramedy like Igby Goes Down and 17 Again. What brought him to the Austen-zombie flick and what inspired him to create this particular world of the undead?

We caught up with Steers last summer at San Diego Comic Con to talk all things Pride and Prejudice and Zombies…

On how the project came about…

“[Pride and Prejudice and Zombies] was actually something I knew was out there because a lot of people had taken shots at trying to get it made,” said Steers. (The project was first announced in 2009 with Natalie Portman attached for the lead, and with David O. Russell behind the camera.) “I looked at it and had a take on it that I was really confident would work. So I went in there and rewrote it and made it happen.”

Steers said he approached it as he would have approached directing a play in a setting different from the one in which it was originall set: “We set up this alternate world where this zombie epidemic had taken place about 70 years earlier and everyone had grown up with that all their lives, and then staged Pride and Prejudice in that world. In the way that if you were doing Richard III, you might set it in Nazi Germany.”

On balancing the romance and horror tones…

Though the undead play a significant role in the film, Steers emphasized that Pride and Prejudice and Zombiesis still very much rooted in the original Austen novel and its many relatable characters…

“I didn’t do horror for horror’s sake, or romance for romance’s sake,” says Steers. “It really was about style coming out of substance and to have you invested in these characters, so when they are at risk, you really are worried about them and the risk seems real.”

On the kind of zombies in the film…

There have been so many different ways of depicting the undead in film, TV, and literature. What kind of zombies are Steers’ zombies, and which inspirations did he draw from?

“From a literary standpoint, Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend was a big template for me,” says Steers. “The idea that they are still retaining some of who they were as people and that there is a brain working there, that they are not just some mindless thing, walking around waiting to get decapitated made it more formidable. They don’t view themselves as monsters; they view themselves as a competing race with the human race … There’s so much in I Am Legend. For all the film versions of it, I don’t think it’s ever been filmed.”

On favorite Austen adaptations…

Of course previous zombie flicks aren’t the only canon Steers has to draw from with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies — there’s also the many beloved on-screen adaptations of Pride and Prejudiceitself. Does he have any particular favorites?

“The Laurence Olivier version isn’t ultimately very good because it was adapted for the stage and was really watered down, but the screenplay was written by Upton Sinclair,” says Steers, adding…

“There’s really clever subtext and lines in it that work on more than one level. And some of the performances, too. That was something I went back to look at. The sisters all look like they are in their 50s playing daughters, but the mom is a great old Broadway performer who is just hilarious. I had seen the other productions, but I didn’t really study anything.”

On the socioeconomic politics of Austen (and zombies)…

Class dynamics are an integral part of the original Pride and Prejudice.How does this translate into a version with the undead — and was Steers particularly thinking of this Austenian element when crafting his film?

“[This theme] is enhanced because there has been no English revolution,” says Steers. “It is the hegemony of the ruling class that goes unquestioned. In this, you have an English revolution — and the rich are eaten.” 

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies opens in theaters on February 5th.