Blake Lively Offered Lead Role In Pride And Prejudice And Zombies

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies has had a long, hard road to traverse to get to where it is, which is essentially nowhere. Natalie Portman is still around as a producer, but she has long since backed out of the lead role, and the film is currently playing host to its third director, Craig Gillespie (who replaced Mike White, who replaced David O’Russell). It hasn't been easy, but no one at the studio seems willing to give up on this adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith’s highly publicized novel.

According to Twitch, Gillespie has met with Gossip Girl star Blake Lively and offered her the lead role of Elizabeth Bennett, a role that has been turned down by Mia Wasikowska, Scarlett Johansson, and Emma Stone. Lively has been busy herself not only with her role on Gossip Girlbut she found major roles for herself in Green Lantern and Ben Affleck’s excellent bank robbery drama The Town. The girl can act, that’s for sure.

Judging by Pride and Prejudice and Zombies' track record, this offer means absolutely nothing and Lively's will just be another in a long list of names that have walked away or stayed away. There’s a lot of potential for this movie to be lots and lots of fun, and kick off the “Quirk Classics” novel adaptation trend. But unfortunately if they can’t get it off the ground, we’ll never get the chance to enjoy it. The Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter adaptation, from Smith's first "from scratch" novel, has wrapped up production, but PP&Z is the book that started it all, and it'd be a shame for it to never see the light of day.