Freestyle Digital Media is excited to walk down the aisle with Weekly World News for the day and date release of the zomcom romantic comedy The Zombie Wedding. The Zombie Wedding debuts on Cable and Digital VOD September 13, 2024, including Apple TV, Amazon, Google Play, Fandango At Home, Comcast, Dish, and DirecTV. The Zombie Wedding will also be available in select markets theatrically.

The Zombie Wedding is based on the eponymous interactive play and is the first title to launch the Weekly World News IP-driven studio slate of movie projects. Head down the aisle with a large ensemble cast that includes Cheri Oteri (“Saturday Night Live”), Seth Gilliam (“The Walking Dead”), Heather Matarazzo (Scream, The Princess Diaries), Kevin Chamberlin (“Jessie”), Siobhan Fallon Hogan (Men in Black), Vincent Pastore (“The Sopranos”), Ajay Naidu (Office Space), Micky Dolenz of The Monkees, and more!

When I was a kid, I was in love with the idea of Weekly World News.

Which is not to say I ever bought it or anything; no, even for my comic book obsessed mind, my parents thought that WWN was too much of a waste of time or money. But I loved zipping through it while in line at Giant Eagle (our local supermarket, and while I realize it is a silly name for a supermarket… I actually have no follow-up. It’s just a really silly name for one. “Giant Eagle”. What does that even mean?). Just the idea of a faux newspaper “reporting” on fake goings-on around the world and how they impacted life around us. It was just weird. And as a kid, I LOVED weirdness.

It was all strangely cryptid-based, too. With Bat-Boy and Bigfoot stories and tales of aliens meeting our Presidential candidates back when politics was still light-hearted enough to see “Aliens Endorse Clinton” and not take it as an affront or a politicized slight at either person running. The WWN loved talking about fictional beasts. You would think I would have grown up a fan of such imaginary creatures, but no… I just liked the weird, seemingly non-sequitur notion of everything the World Weekly News did.

To consider it, it seems strange that it took WWN until now to launch a films division. It feels like something they would have tried back in the 1990’s when it was arguably at the height of its power and “prestige”. But here we are in 2024, and WWN is releasing its first movie. And it’s definitely as strange as you would suspect given its parent company.

The Zombie Wedding is a tale set during a zombie apocalypse that is localized entirely in the town of Vineland, New Jersey. We meet the loving couple Ashley and Zack as they get engaged and prepare for their wedding date. Of course, hi jinx ensue, and Zack is bitten and turned into a zombie during the lead-up to the wedding day.

Ashley and Zack have to navigate their new difficulties and wrestle with if marriage is still right for them. The two are in love, though, and are bound and determined to see it all through. Even as their friends and family–from both walks of life (and unlike, I guess)–voice their concerns.

And during all of this, who has sent reporters to Vineland to report on the zombie outbreak? Why, the World Weekly News, of course. That’s meta!

TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS

+ For a studio’s first effort, this is surprisingly technically sound. Everything looks really good, the editing is smooth, the acting is solid, and nothing about the cinematography or direction distracted me from the movie. It’s a very well-put-together piece of cinema!

I’ve seen a lot of initial efforts, and they don’t have nearly the polish that The Zombie Wedding does. To come right out of the gates looking this good is a big plus!

+ As would be expected, the film does have its share of funny moments. Mostly in the form of one-liners that are delivered off-handedly. The movie wasn’t a riot for me or anything, but I did laugh out loud a few different times.

– At over a hundred minutes long, The Zombie Wedding is far lengthier than a World Weekly News movie has any need to be! I’ll be honest: my interest waned several times during the movie, and it was incredibly hard to keep interested. There just isn’t enough plot here to sustain a one-hundred-plus minute runtime.

If the editors and director had trimmed about fifteen to twenty minutes from this flick, it would have been much easier to stay engaged and interested, but as it is… it’s just too damn long.

– Honestly, the overall idea is a bit tame for a World Weekly News idea. And it does feel a bit derivative of We Are Zombies, another movie that came out this year that I reviewed. We Are Zombies took a similar idea–there is a zombie outbreak, and the undead are reasonable and strikingly human–and frankly, they did it better. From WWN I want something bonkers and crazy and completely out-there. This was, instead, just another zombie flick. Where was Batboy, god damn it?

OVERALL

Let’s be honest: The Zombie Wedding is exactly the movie that World Weekly News set out to make, so god bless them for having accomplished their goal. I’m not sure it was for me, but I imagine they are happy with the end results, and that’s what matters most, right? But yeah, for me, I found it to be incredibly overlong and not funny enough to merit that. Technically, everything here is proficient and professional, for which kudos are deserved for a first time effort. But it just had too weak of writing for me to give it a passing grade.