Can combining two lame, played-out genres create something new? That’s the basic question behind Warm Bodies (based on the book of the same name), which combines the zombie movie with the unpopular-high-school-kid-in-love movie, in the hopes of earning a DOUBLE KITSCH SCORE. Nicholas Hoult (Beast from X-Men First Class) plays the zombie, Teresa Palmer is his human love interest, and you can watch the first four minutes online below. I guess it makes sense, I mean, what’s a zombie anyway if not a prototypical movie slacker, only with paler skin, discheveleder hair, a slouchier posture, and a dirtier hoody? Anyway, I have to admit, my initial reaction is “GUHHHHHHH…”, but it does come from Jonathan Levine, who last directed 50/50, which was easily one of my top five favorite movies of that year. Maybe this will be good? I wouldn’t put my money on that, but I’d bet my life that the zombies are some kind of metaphor, you guys!

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"Why didn't you write me? ... BRAAAAAAAAINS..."

God dammit. For the last time, people, zombies are not timely metaphors. They’re not symbols of consumer culture, or overpopulation, or the war on terror, and they sure as hell aren’t the perfect jumping off point for a teen romance. They’re big sacks of movie meat that you can explode without pondering motive or remorse, like Nazis. ZOMBIES ARE TO BE EXPLODED.

Anyway. Summit has released some new stills from Warm Bodies, their zombie romance adapted from Isaac Marion’s book by Jonathan Levine. Wait a second, the guy who directed 50/50? What the shit? It stars Nicholas Hoult (X-Men: First Class), Teresa Palmer (I Am Number Four), Rob Corddry (lots of stuff), Dave Franco (James’s brother), Analeigh Tipton (who?) and John Malkovich (awesome). Here’s the book description:

R is a young man with an existential crisis–he is a zombie. He shuffles through an America destroyed by war, social collapse, and the mindless hunger of his undead comrades, but he craves something more than blood and brains. He can speak just a few grunted syllables, but his inner life is deep, full of wonder and longing. He has no memories, no identity, and no pulse, but he has dreams.
After experiencing a teenage boy’s memories while consuming his brain, R makes an unexpected choice that begins a tense, awkward, and stragely sweet relationship with the victim’s human girlfriend. Julie is a blast of color in the otherwise dreary and gray landscape that surrounds R. His decision to protect her will transform not only R, but his fellow Dead, and perhaps their whole lifeless world.

Yeah, because that’s what I’ve always wanted in my zombie films, more wonder, and longing. I loved 50/50, but it doesn’t bode well that they released three pictures, and they’re all of a hot dude looking zombie-ish. Look, all I’m saying is that at this rate, it’s not going to be long before the goth dudes in high school start wearing blueish lipstick and crazy contacts to guy with the guyliner, and that’s how I’ll know it’s finally time to kill myself.

[ComingSoon]

I have a problem, you guys. I’m afraid that if I’m completely honest with you about how much I liked 50/50, you won’t respect me anymore. It tickled me right in the sentimental parts I don’t like to talk about at parties, and now those parts are all moist, and I’m afraid if I tell you about them that it would just be gross. But here goes.

We can call it a “cancer comedy” if it makes you feel better, but the dirty little secret of 50/50 is that it’s kind of a rom-com. And my dirty little secret is that I kind of really like rom-coms (the ones that are good, that people don’t normally think of as rom-coms). But that’s what it is. A contemporary story about love, relationships, friends, and family, that also happens to be pretty funny a lot of the time. Oh, and also cancer, but we’ll get to that.

Written by Will Reiser and directed by Jonathan Levine of The Wackness, 50/50 is a personal story based on Reiser’s real-life diagnosis with cancer when he was in his late twenties, and how he and his friends, like Seth Rogen, dealt with it (the “50/50″ of the title refers to what he was told his chances of survival were). Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Adam, the fictionalized Reiser; Rogen plays Kyle, the fictionalized Rogen. (It must suck for Rogen that he lost all that weight and JGL still gets to play the cancer patient, but between this and Funny People, he has “guy whose friend has cancer” on lock.)

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