IGN reports Amazon's produced Zombieland television series will not go past a test pilot released on the online store's Instant Video service.
Zombieland's film writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick wrote and served as executive producers of the television pilot. Reese tweeted Amazon's decision to axe the series.
Our Zombieland series will not be moving forward on Amazon.Sad for everyone involved.
— Rhett Reese (@RhettReese) May 17, 2013
Doomed from the start due to negative buzz from fans of Zombieland, Reese didn't understand the early hate.
I'll never understand the vehement hate the pilot received from die-hard Zombieland fans.You guys successfully hated it out of existence. — Rhett Reese (@RhettReese) May 17, 2013
Amazon used its Instant Video streaming service as a testing ground for over 14 original pilot episodes last month. Zombieland was the most popular debut with 75 percent of respondents voting to keep it. Though the series had a high voting score, critics bashed it as poorly made since its release last month. Io9 writer Rob Bricken called Amazon's pilot "a cheap bootleg of Zombieland the movie."
"While it's not awful, it feels like some kind of high school theatrical adaptation of the movie," Bricken says.
Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin starred in the original 2009 Zombieland about a group of zombie apocalypse survivors in search of a sanctuary through a road trip. The television series featured Kirk Ward replacing Harrelson's Tallahassee and Tyler Ross filling in the shoes of Eisenberg's Columbus.
