Handling the Undead being shopped around to studios

John Ajvide Lindqvist’s book Let the Right One In turned out to be pretty big for a horror novel from Sweden. It got translated into English, made into a film, and then remade in America, all within the span of six years. Not bad! So I assume that all the bigshots will be paying attention now that his second book, Handling the Undead, is being pitched to U.S. studios for a possible film deal, according to FirstShowing.net. First published in 2005, the novel just received an English translation this year, so it’s understandable if you haven’t heard of it yet. As the synopsis goes:

Stockholm was overtaken by the undead after a period of strange weather, and the uprising has surprising consequences for several people, including David, a comedian whose dead wife comes back to life; self-harming psychic teenagers Flora and Elvy; and journalist Gustav Mahler, whose only hope of saving his daughter and himself from grief lies in exhuming his young grandson and hoping the boy will be reanimated.

Supposedly, the emotional gravitas is similar to other zombie works like The Walking Dead, which has an adaptation currently airing on AMC. I loved Lindqvist’s take on vampires and the original film was expertly crafted, so count me in if any studios pick this up and attach a director with restraint to it. You can never have enough classy zombie stories.