Back in 2019, Kill List and High-Rise director Ben Wheatley announced his plans for a “six-part zombie drama satirising intergenerational divides in the UK.” Then this thing called Covid happened (inspiring Wheatley’s pandemic horror In the Earth), and that plan was quickly derailed. Now, the zombie show, entitled Generation Z, is back on the cards.
Speaking at an Empire VIP screening of the English filmmaker’s (slightly unexpected) mega shark blockbuster Meg 2: The Trench, Wheatley teased the upcoming project as a return to the darker, grittier style he’s known for:
“What I’m doing next is six hours for Channel 4, [a] TV series, a horror-based thing […] In the same way I did In The Earth after Rebecca, I’ll do something that’s back to [the] Kill List-y, Sightseers-y world.”
Empire also lets us know the upcoming series will be a “zoomers-vs-boomers “ satire of modern day Britain, which, as anyone familiar with Wheatley’s work will know, is a topic he excels in exploring. The director has previously called George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead one of his all-time favorite horror movies, which might give us some indication of the kind of brain-munchers we’ll be looking at.
Wheatley also informed the audience that anyone worried that the traditionally indie filmmaker had hung up that hat for the world of big-budget blockbusters, needn’t be – but that he will be looking to do something big again in future, saying that “once I’ve got that [horror series] out of my system, then I’ll be looking to do another larger film.”
Larger in this case means budget AND beast, as when asked if he’d like to make a full-on monster movie one day, Wheatley teased “This is kind of a kaiju film, by the back door. It’s quite a big old shark! But yeah, I’d like to go bigger.”
That’s all we know on Generation Z, but rest assured we’ll bring you the updates as and when we get them. While you wait, you can still check out Meg 2: The Trench in theaters, and follow it up with our article defending Wheatley as the perfect choice to direct the megalodon movie.
