Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Book Trailer Better Than 75% of Movie Trailers

Apologies again for subjecting you earlier to the trailer for Iron Cross. It was for your own good, I swear -- newsworthy, topical and emblematic of a larger issue at hand with bad cinema. More and more bad cinema has entitlement issues, from crummy, lazy romantic comedies worth a fraction of the $10-$12 they coax from you to overwrought dramas that barely hide their contempt for viewers. And bad cinema begets bad trailers like the one mentioned above. They can all take pointers from the admittedly NSFW preview for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls, which spins camp, satire and genre comprehension into a splendid little whirlwind of publicity worth probably 1,000 times its budget. And it doesn't even sell a movie.

The sequel to Seth Grahame-Smith's 2009 bestseller -- an undead riff on Jane Austen and soon-to-be major motion picture starring Natalie Portman -- comes out this spring, but you can get your first sense of what to expect in the 19th-century bloodbath herewith. It's a lesson in knowing your audience, supplying some goods but not all of them, and leaving the viewer wanting more. And no, it's not cheating because it's selling a different medium. Anyway, it's no Birdemic, so don't get your hopes super high.

VERDICT: Sold!

[via The Awl]