Power Rangers Creator Jack Olesker Developing Zombie Sitcom

Snarls, moans and a craving for brains were qualities each “zombie” had at Lakeshore Lanes Sunday night during a “zombie bowling” event.

Casandra Devries, the coordinator of the Michigan City Zombie Walk group, organized a bowling night for her fellow group members and received a special visit from Power Rangers creator Jack Olesker.

Olesker came to Lakeshore Lanes Sunday night from 7 to 11 p.m. to visit and talk with individual “zombies” as part of a casting screening for a new “zombie sitcom” he is creating, he said.

The show’s pilot episode – which will be filmed in March or April of the upcoming year – will be pitched to the Syfy Channel, HBO, Comedy Central and other television production companies in Los Angeles.

The filming of the pilot episode, however, will be done closer to home – in South Bend.

Devries said the opportunity to work with Olesker on a television project is “like a dream come true.”

“I make YouTube videos and I made a zombie movie over the summer, so this is something I only hoped I would be doing,” she said.

Olesker said the sitcom idea came to him from popular culture’s current obsession with the afterlife, and in particular, zombies.

Shows such as AMC’s “The Walking Dead” inspired him to take the zombie motif even further, with a comedy where everyone is a zombie, right down to the bus drivers and waitresses.

“Zombies are really hot right now,” Olesker said. “They are ubiquitous. It’s gone from being a niche to being a mainstream genre in such a short time, that it (the show) made perfect sense.”

During the zombie bowling event, Olesker gave the group of zombies some face time to show him their best brain-hungry personas and then met with each zombie individually to find out what their interests are, in terms of television roles.

Olesker will cast lead roles, extras and supporting roles from local “zombies” in the next few months and begin the process of filming the pilot episode in the spring.

If the pilot is picked up, he said, the show will film 13 episodes for its first season and 26 each subsequent season for as long as the show runs.

After Olesker explained his intentions to the group, he said he could tell they “all brought their A-game tonight.”

Source: Herald Argus