Seth Grahame-Smith, the mash-up novel author of the well-known book-turned-movie "Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter" brings to the big screen this February his new mash-up adaptation "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies". A mash-up novel is a work of fiction that combines a pre-existing literature text, often a classic work of fiction, like in this case Jane Austen classic "Pride and Prejudice" with another genre, such as horror genre (like Zombies) into a single narrative.

Seth Grahame-Smith, and Burr Steers the director and screenwriter, gave a provocative twist to Jane Austen's classic novel; a story that deals with the complex relationships between lovers of different classes in 19th Century England but gets a whole lot more complicated and horrific by the arrival of a violent zombie outbreak. This mash-up is filled with jems as P&P&Z follows the story of a badass martial artist and weapons expert Elizabeth "Lizzy" Bennet (Lily James) and her equally badass sisters Lydia (Ellie Bamber), Mary (Millie Brady), Jane (Bella Heathcote), and Kitty (Suki Waterhouse).

The film successfully mixed a classic novel in the Victorian era with zombies and martial arts -in a female driven plot- with lots of bravado added to the Bennet sisters, packing some serious ammo underneath those Regency gowns and going as sexy zombie-hunters, which definitely gave PPZ a much modern feel in this modern-classic juxtaposition.

The deadly circumstances of the time forces Lizzy into an alliance with her antagonizer zombie-slayer Mr. Darcy (Sam Riley) who is handsome and quite arrogant as well as very intriguing to her for his prodigious zombie-killing skills. The land is overrun with the undead turning the bucolic English countryside into a war zone to which Mr. Darcy and Ms. Bennet  must unite and put aside their personal and social prejudices in order to take the blood-soaked battlefield and rid the country of this zombie menace all while discovering the depth of their true feelings for one another. The violence in the film is a bit gory but without being too serious in a good-zombie-killing-comedic sort of way. Grahame-Smith's use of Jane Austen's prose retained the integrity of the book while playfully crafting a period horror-comedy on top of it.

Entertainment Affair had the chance to sit down with some of the cast, the director and screenwriter, and the writer of the book and this is what they had to say when we asked about this particular interpretation and what they liked:

James: "I definitely think if you're going to do Pride & Prejudice again, you should make it super strange. I just thought it was fun and a new take on it. I also thought that the Bennett sisters being a crew of killers, the women doing the fighting, was a great opportunity because you usually don't get that in that genre."

The book author-Seth Grahame-Smith: "The funniest thing to me throughout was the fact that these people, these Regency Era aristocrats were so stuck and so concerned with their pettiness that they would actually care about marrying up and about who was the best dressed when their country was falling apart around them. All I did was take these brilliant characterizations that Jane Austen had created, and the pride and prejudices and turned them up to 11. Instead of sparring with words, Darcy and Liz spar with swords... and I knew I could not wink at the reader ever. You cannot give away the joke. You have to approach this with dead earnestness and seriousness. That's the fun of it for me."

Booth: "For me, it just accentuates the original themes of the book. I've seen zombies films where someone is chased from A to B or fight for the right vaccination. We've seen that. But this isn't about that. How will that story that we know so well and love survive and change with this extraordinary circumstance of a zombie plague? And that's what quirky and funny. You know how it turns out but how will it differ? How will the proposal scene go down? Very differently."

And their thoughts on the feminist tones in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies:

Heathcote: "That's what I love about PPZ. It's taken all these things that are in Jane Austen's original novel, like female empowerment and forward thinking women and it's just like transplanted into this world where this physical expression of all of that. We are all fighting. We are all saving the boys. Like they're our damsels. I love it. I feel like the film is completely a feminist film."

Huston: "It's like ultra-feminism on crack, coming from England where you've kind of seen every incarnation of Pride and Prejudice over and over again — brilliantly done, not taking anything away from that — but it's nice to do and see something new. To witness characters being reinvented in certain ways. This gave you the freedom to do that because of the nature of the film."

The actors also shared what it was like to train to be a kickass zombie killer:

Heathcote: "I did about three months of kung-fu in L.A. Before I went over and then did about a month with the girls for all the other more specific skills. But yeah, I got really into it. Because I get really anxious before a job, it was like good to channel that into something positive instead of just spinning out."

James: "I did a lot of boxing. I go in phases of exercising a lot and then not, so I was in a -not exercise- phase and really had to get strong and fit. I also did some martial arts training when we were all together. Since the Bennet sisters all trained together, it was like rehearsals, too, and we became really close, like sisters."

Huston: "Sam [Riley] and I were rather out of shape [when they have their big sword fight], and it was not nearly as cool when the camera was cut. It was also like 4:30 in the morning. Let's do the big fight scene then, thanks buddy! It's always fun to do it with someone else who is equally out of shape. But we did get pretty good at it. It's just we did it so many times."

This interpretation of Elizabeth Bennett particularly enjoyed kicking Mr. Darcy's ass and James shared with us:

James: "She's just the coolest character, isn't she? So strong and independent and quick thinking and original. I wanted to play Elizabeth Bennet anyway but then in this new form, it was really fun. I felt like the fighting was an external expression of her inner conflict. Not to be too earnest... but it did feel like that sexual frustration and that frustration for how things are came out in the fighting. Being able to fight and beat each other up and beat Darcy up. It actually weirdly really works. And in that scene with Sam [Riley], I really did beat him up. He had like bruises and stuff. I just got way too into it."

And she has worked with swords before!

James: "Yes, I did "Wrath of Titans" just after I left drama school, so I'd done quite a lot of sword fighting training. But none of it's in the film. All of that was completely cut out. But I did learn to fight for that film."

As for the future, Heathcote isn't allowed to reveal her next project yet, but James, who is also currently appearing in the miniseries War and Peace, is about to begin work on Edgar Wright's new film Baby Driver, to which she shared with us playfully "I play an American waitress, and it's not a period piece!"

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies opens in movie theaters on Feb. 5.