First Casting News for Zombieland TV Series

It's been years since a Zombieland TV series was first mentioned and it's officially moving forward with Amazon Studios. Details are still coming in about Amazon's plan for the series, but the first casting news has been revealed. 

Tyler Ross (pictured below) has been officially cast as Columbus, a role filled by Jesse Eisenberg in the original movie. Abigail Breslin played Little Rock in the movie and the character is now being filled by Izabela Vidovic (pictured below) in the TV series. There's no word on casting for Tallahassee and Wichita yet, but it should be announced shortly.

Deadline has confirmed that Zombieland writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick wrote the pilot, and will be executive producers with Gavin Polone. Eli Craig (Tucker and Dale vs Evil) was reportedly in talks to come on board as the pilot director, but we don't have a status update at this time.

Originally, the plan was said to be a straight-to-series order, but it looks like Amazon will be sticking with a traditional pilot order first. Previously, it was said that Amazon plans to air the series as an Amazon instant-exclusive series, following in the footstep of Netflix with their original programming push. Amazon has yet to officially comment on the project, but we should have more details when the cast fills out.

Here are some character details from our previous report that give you an idea of what we could see from the TV versions of the main Zombieland characters:

“Tallahassee is still kind of a snarky weirdo, but he seems to have a much less spiky relationship with Columbus. He and Columbus have a pretty amusing thing where they riff on the fact that Steven Seagal movies always have three-word titles like “Marked for Justice” or “May Cause Diarrhea.” But Tallahassee also dispenses homespun wisdom about how to feel happy with your life. He also tells a weird story about being in a trailer park with a perpetually nude Matthew McConaughey. He also has a somewhat heartwarming scene where he tells Columbus that he’s been wandering aimlessly for a long time, but maybe he’s been put here for a reason — to help Columbus and the others.

Columbus is much the same, except that he tracks down his grandma and grandpa (Bubbie and Peepaw) only to find them recently zombiefied. Also, Columbus is trying to deal with his newfound relationship with Wichita, after their first kiss. He has started calling her “Krista,” her real name — but there are some problems, especially after she finds him reading a book about fatherhood. He tries to organize a romantic scavenger hunt for her in the IKEA they’re camping out in, but it goes kind of horribly.

Wichita is still trying to look after Little Rock, trying to teach her math with problems about someone stealing from a liquor store and jumping on a train going 42 miles per hour, with a cop chasing in a car going 88 miles per hour. We also learn a lot more about Wichita’s backstory, including how she ran away from her father after he had her stealing people’s Christmas presents — and later, she found out she had a sister who was also being a grifter with her dad.

Little Rock seems actually kind of excited about meeting Columbus’ grandparents, before they turn out to be zombies. And she shares some of her own backstory, about how her dad parked her at a school while he went off grifting on his own — and then yanked her out of school right before a dance that she was looking forward to.”

Tyler Ross:

Izabela Vidovic: