Matt Smith Will Battle The Undead In This Zombie Thriller
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I’m admittedly not the most knowledgeable Doctor Who fan in the known universe. I like it, I watch the long running BBC sci-fi adventure with some regularity, but I’m not up on all of the minutia like more thorough Whovians out there. Over the years, the Time Lord has battled all kinds of enemies, like Daleks and Cybermen, but I don’t know if he’s ever gone up against zombies (I could, very well be wrong, like I said, there are sizeable gaps in my information on this front). That is going to change soon, sort of, as former Doctor Matt Smith has signed on to go head to head with the undead in the upcoming zombie film Patient Zero.
Deadline reports that Smith has joined the cast of the zombie thriller that already includes Game of Thrones star Natalie Dormer (who also recently appeared in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay—Part 1). Stefan Ruzowitsky will direct the picture, while Mike Le wrote the script. As it stands, the story follows a man, most likely Smith from the sounds of it, who hunts for, you guessed it, patient zero after a strain of super rabies causes a zombie apocalypse. But there’s a hook, he’s inexplicably immune to the plague and can walk among the monsters and even communicate with them. He hopes to use his skills to cure the disease and save his infected wife, presumably Dormer.
That’s not the most original story in the world, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be good, and if nothing else, I like to say “super rabies,” so that’ll be fun. From these limited details, Patient Zero could very easily be really good or really bad. We’re definitely hoping for the former.
This isn’t Smith’s first post-Who zombie tussle either, as he appears in Burr Stears’ twisted Jane Austen tale, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies alongside Lily James, Ellie Bamber, Millie Brady, Bella Heathcote, Suki Waterhouse, Sam Riley, Jack Huston, and Charles Dance. Even outside of this pair of undead adventures, Smith hasn’t travelled too far afield from his genre roots. He played an important part in Ryan Gosling’s directorial debut, the dark fantasy The Lost River, and he’ll appear alongside another Game of Thrones star, Emilia Clarke, in the upcoming Terminator: Genisys. From the few photos we’ve seen, it appears he’ll play some kind of soldier from the future, thus possibly continuing his time travelling ways on screen.
Right now there’s no word on when Patient Zero will begin production, but we’ll keep our eyes peeled.
