Another 'Pride and Prejudice' Film in the Works — and the Immortal Appeal of Jane Austen
February 12, 2013 · from the Word & Film archive
Pride and Prejudice turned 200 on January 28, and the anniversary finds Elizabeth Bennet as employable as ever. In the works right now: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the long-gestating adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith's mashup; fresh from Sundance, Austenland, about a theme park for Darcy-obsessives; and the BBC's Death Comes to Pemberley, from P. D. James' murder-mystery sequel. Two centuries, zero fatigue.
The screen scorecard is already crowded: the 1940 Olivier version (scripted in part by Aldous Huxley), the sainted 1995 BBC serial with Colin Firth, Joe Wright's 2005 film with Keira Knightley, plus Bridget Jones, Bollywood's Bride and Prejudice and a modest army of web series.
Why does Austen adapt so well? The unromantic answer: her novels are engineered like screenplays — tight casts, ballroom set pieces, dialogue that *is* the action, and a heroine whose interiority actors can play as wit. Every generation gets the Elizabeth it deserves and remakes Darcy in its own image.
The bicentennial's real lesson is the mashup boom: when a novel enters its third century being parodied with zombies and it still plays, that's not a trend, that's infrastructure. The 1995 and 2005 benchmarks are cataloged on the novel's page.
