When ZOMBIELAND screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick were writing the original draft of the script for that movie, they envisioned their characters crossing paths with a zombified Patrick Swayze. They shared the pages they wrote for the Swayze cameo on Twitter last week.
Unfortunately, Swayze had fallen ill by the time the script was ready, so they couldn't get him into ZOMBIELAND. So they started writing cameos for other actors – like Sylvester Stallone, Mark Hamill, and Joe Pesci.
The Swayze pages contained references to ROAD HOUSE, DIRTY DANCING, GHOST, POINT BREAK, and other entries in Swayze's filmography, and the cameos written for these other actors are similarly packed with references to their work.
The script pages for all three cameo scenes are embedded below.
It's really fun to read these pages and imagine what it could have been like if these actors had made a cameo in ZOMBIELAND, but none of these scenes are as great as the cameo Bill Murray made in the film (which was so cool that he was even brought back for the sequel, ZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP). Swayze, Stallone, Hamill, and Pesci were all written as if they were really zombies, while the Murray cameo is even better because he's only pretending to be a zombie, then actually gets to talk to the other characters.
STALLONE:
— Rhett Reese (@RhettReese) March 20, 2020
— Rhett Reese (@RhettReese) March 20, 2020
— Rhett Reese (@RhettReese) March 20, 2020
— Rhett Reese (@RhettReese) March 20, 2020
HAMILL:
— Paul Wernick (@paulwernick) March 21, 2020
— Paul Wernick (@paulwernick) March 21, 2020
— Paul Wernick (@paulwernick) March 21, 2020
— Paul Wernick (@paulwernick) March 21, 2020
PESCI:
— Rhett Reese (@RhettReese) March 23, 2020
— Rhett Reese (@RhettReese) March 23, 2020
— Rhett Reese (@RhettReese) March 23, 2020
— Rhett Reese (@RhettReese) March 23, 2020
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