The zombie subgenre has thrown up a number of new twists on the standard formula in the half a century since George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead set the template that much of the genre still adheres to even now, but Zack Snyder is no stranger to making some changes to the standard undead playbook.
Alongside Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, it was Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake that helped popularize the fast-paced and sprinting zombie, while he also threw in the queasy notion of an undead newborn for good measure. Netflix’s Army of the Dead has introduced some more fresh elements to the standard zombie mythos as well, with the heightened intelligence of the Alphas creating a social structure inside the walls of a quarantined Las Vegas.
Zeus and his good lady are clearly the city’s power couple, and it’s even hinted that they’ve somehow managed to procreate in an admittedly gnarly scene of a fetus being cut out of her decapitated corpse. In a new interview, Snyder confirmed that the Alphas are indeed capable of doing the dirty, although the machinations or logistics over how two zombies bump uglies are thankfully left unexplained. At least for now, anyway.
“I believe that some zombie love happened, some sweet zombie lovemaking. I don’t know if it was sweet. It was probably pretty aggressive. They’re like a better us. They’re no longer destroying their environment. They’re not fighting with each other. They’re less bad for everybody. They’re less toxic.”
Snyder previously revealed that he wanted to include a zombie stripper with a bite taken out of his penis, so we can probably assume that one won’t be able to father a little nipper. In any case, the idea of zombies settling down and raising a family was barely mentioned within the context of Army of the Dead, but it’ll no doubt factor heavily into whatever the director is cooking up for what feels like inevitable sequels, especially when he’s already teased an insane idea.