There’s been a hushed, husky-voiced message left for us on the Bleeding Cool hotline* and it says:

Here’s a scoop for you – Paramount have optioned both Max Brooks’ Zombie Survival Guide and its Recorded Attacks spin-off.

At first glance it looks as though the former would be rather difficult to turn into a screenplay, and the latter would be a really very expensive production, indeed, but both have absolutely wonderful movies locked away inside them.

The Zombie Survival Guide is a survival manual that we’re all going to need by, I’d say, 2018 at the latest. Recorded Attacks began as an appendix in that book, recounting what historical evidence there is of zombie uprisings throughout the millennia. Lately, it has been translated into a comic book with art by Ibraim Roberson. All of the above are included in Paramount’s deal.

With imagination and flexibility, these could make a nice prequel, sequel or pair of bookends once the World War Z movie is out. Or they might end up as a completely separate project. It’s too early to say.

Survival Guide seems to lend itself to a documentary treatment, either for an entire film or as mock-doc sequences within a more conventional narrative. It could even translate well as something like Shynola’s animations in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy film. Bottom line, there’s scope to do something imaginative and unusual here. I hope Paramount put some great talent on the project.

Here’s the book trailer for the Recorded Attacks comic:

If you want a sample of the actual comic, you can download the first chapter. Or you might just want to buy a copy now.

*Don’t be a cynic. This hotline is every bit as real as the events reported in the Zombie Survival Guide and Recorded Attacks.