It seems you just can’t keep a zombie idea down. Though it has faced numerous script drafts and a busload of directors arriving and departing, the adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride And Prejudice And Zombies is crawling from the limbo grave to stalk the screen once more.

Panorama Media, Darko Entertainment, Handsomecharlie Films (Natalie Portman’s company) and producer Allison Shearmur are behind the new effort, which is digging up indie financing for a project that will be based – in part, unless they get more writers to take a crack at it – on a script written by David O. Russell when he was attached to direct.

Of course, he’s no longer directly involved, and the team is looking to find someone who can finally wrangle it to the screen following flirtations with the likes of Neil Marshall, Jeffrey Blitz, Mike White and, most recently, Craig Gillespie.

Seth Grahame-Smith’s tale essentially takes Jane Austen’s story of mismatched love and manners and adds in an undead apocalypse, thereby giving Elizabeth Bennet more to worry about than whether a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. Or, in this case, a hatchet.