After picking up Keira Knightley from Disney Studios, Matthew returned to his house. Before stepping inside he glanced around: the paparazzi who'd camped here all night last month had vanished. Not just from the residential block—he'd been watching. Unless you bump into them by chance, hardly any paparazzi chase him or Keira Knightley these days.
Gossip has a shelf life. The uproar over him living with Keira Knightley has burned through the public's curiosity. Besides, this is Los Angeles, where stars hook up or split every hour; the two of them have already been forgotten.
Inside, Keira Knightley lounged on the sofa, picking up the car conversation. Puffing up at Matthew, she said, "I still don't get it. You turn down the lead in king arthur for some niche zombie flick?"
"Darling," Matthew sat beside her and slipped an arm around her shoulders, "who ruffled your feathers?"
Keira Knightley leaned against him, humming contentedly. "Try training all morning—you'll end up like me!" Then she caught herself. "Forget it; someone like you could train all day and still be buzzing with energy."
She dragged the topic back. "I just can't figure out why you'd take that film."
"Easy to turn a profit," Matthew gave part of the truth. "The original already had its audience, so the remake starts with a built-in base. Why else does Hollywood keep recycling old movies?"
He added, "Budget's only twenty-eight million; recouping is simpler, and I carry a bit of pull."
Keira Knightley sprawled across his lap. "A bit of pull? You're box-office gold!" She sniffed. "Three leads, my foot—two male leads and one supporting actress! Sequel better beef up my part or I'm not signing!"
Matthew let that pass. "When do you start shooting?"
"Little more than two weeks. Crew leaves for the U.K. on the twentieth."
"We'll have broken up before you fly to Britain," Matthew looked at her. "Not much TIME left."
"Mm, the breakup's getting closer," Keira Knightley nodded.
They went on discussing the exact date and details of their split.
Nestled close, they chatted casually about breaking up, neither caring, as though Hollywood had melted them into its mold.
"TIME's running out," Matthew lifted Keira Knightley and headed for his Room. "We can't waste it."
She clearly agreed. "I'm off the next two days—don't you dare leave the house."
Matthew smiled. "Even after we split, you're welcome back anytime."
"Deal!"
For the first half of August, aside from hiding at home with Keira Knightley for two days, Matthew devoted himself to prepping for dawn of the dead. Since the script cast the hero as a kick-boxing ace, keeping up his workouts at the fitness club was enough—no cram-training before cameras rolled.
As for firearms, Sean Daniel had talked with him; learning he'd had pro weapons training on the black hawk down set, the producer didn't send him for extra prep.
Ever since playing Captain Ronald Speirs in band of brothers, Matthew had been the kind of actor producers and directors praised as rock-solid.
Shooting would start at month's end, yet dawn of the dead still had mountains of prep. Because of drawn-out salary talks with Matthew, most of the cast remained unsigned. After piling folders on him, Sean Daniel had him meet director Zack Snyder several times; knowing his reliability, they left the leading man alone and focused on filling the other roles.
Matthew knew Helen Herman had leveraged his star status to grab plenty of slots; Angel Agency's junior actors would swarm the dawn of the dead set in minor parts.
The front-desk girl at Angel Agency told him, for instance, that Alexandra Daddario had passed her audition and would play a girl whose father turns zombie.
In his wild imagination that could even be a selling point: picture bloodthirsty undead sprinting after Alexandra Daddario—audiences might be blown away… if Zack Snyder chose to shoot it that way.
He and Zack Snyder had hit it off; maybe he'd pitch that tiny idea when the moment was right.
Matthew still remembered watching that earthquake movie starring the big guy Johnson, where the daughter seemed to be played by Alexandra Daddario—whenever she was on-screen during the quake scenes, it really was shocking.
Besides, the Crew still hadn't locked down the most important supporting female role in the film.
As far as Matthew knew, Helen Herman also had her eye on the part, but no actress had managed to impress Sean Daniel.
Matthew had no say in casting matters; after a quick check-in, he slipped back into his disciplined routine—mornings at Angel Talent Agency studying the script, running lines, and reading reference material; afternoons training at the fitness club; evenings savoring every last moment with Keira Knightley.
The material the dawn of the dead production supplied included reams of zombie lore; Sean Daniel even had an advance copy of the not-yet-released Zombie Survival Manual. After reading it, Matthew not only learned more about the undead but realized zombies had spawned a full-blown culture across North America and beyond.
Originally, the word "zombie" came from Voodoo, a mysterious religion popular in Ghana, West Africa, and spread to Haiti in the West Indies during the 16th-century slave trade.
Legend says Voodoo sorcerers possessed a secret rite that could raise the dead as zombies to do their bidding.
That was the very first seed of the zombie concept.
The earliest Hollywood zombie film dates back to the 1930s.
The movie cited in the packet was 1932's White Zombie, starring famed vampire actor Bela Lugosi.
To get a clearer grasp of Hollywood zombie culture, Matthew tracked down the film and watched it—only to discover it bore no resemblance to modern zombie flicks. It told of a Voodoo sorcerer who used magic to turn people into zombies and worked them non-stop in a sugar mill for profit. These zombies didn't eat flesh, didn't rot, and were merely corpse-pale; their endless labor actually inspired pity.
That's the key difference between Voodoo zombies and today's pop-culture version: the Voodoo undead are sorcery-made drones who might kill on command but don't devour people, nor do they spread their condition through bites.
So how did zombies evolve into their present form? The files explain that someone later grafted traits from the rabies virus onto the concept.
Thus the modern zombie was born: viral, infectious, aggressive, mindless, and death itself.
The true modern zombie debuted in 1968 when George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead brought it to a mass audience. No longer mere puppets, the undead became rotting, flesh-eating horrors that were neither alive nor dead.
George A. Romero became the undisputed father of the modern zombie film. His "Living Dead trilogy" skewered social ills, captured the spirit of its era, and delivered gory, eye-popping set pieces. It set the template that countless later zombie movies still follow—three universal rules as foundational to zombies as Asimov's are to robots.
Hence zombie films usually run the same playbook: first, some unexplained cause raises the dead as zombies; the creatures have no consciousness, act on instinct, and crave human flesh.
Second, the bite is infectious—anyone killed by a zombie soon reanimates as one.
Finally, zombies are undead; no amount of bodily damage stops them unless you destroy the brain. That requirement for headshots makes the genre viscerally thrilling—most zombie flicks are basically head-popping extravaganzas.
Besides horror, zombie stories almost always carry apocalyptic or disaster overtones, so the focus isn't really the undead but the humans caught in extremis—do they band together or slaughter one another to survive? After reading the material, Matthew's takeaway was grim: if an outbreak ever happened, the real tragedy wouldn't be turning into a zombie; it would be remaining human, because the survivors would be the true walking dead.
This orderly rhythm lasted a week. With Keira Knightley's departure for the U.K. looming, the temporary couple reached the moment they had to part.