These Alternate Zombieland Cameos Would Have Been Wild

Bill Murray wasn't the only actor "Zombieland" screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick considered for the film's iconic celebrity cameo scene. According to the screenwriters themselves, Patrick Swayze, Sylvester Stallone, Mark Hamill, and Joe Pesci were all apparently considered for the sequence, and Reese and Wernick revealed last year that they also wrote versions of the scene for Kevin Bacon and Jean-Claude Van Damme.

The "Zombieland" screenwriters shared script pages for both the Kevin Bacon and Jean-Claude Van Damme versions of the cameo scene on Twitter last year. The two versions each feature numerous references to Bacon and Van Damme's film careers and, like the Murray version that actually ended up in the film, revolve largely around the love and admiration that Woody Harrelson's Tallahassee feels toward the actors. However, Van Damme and Bacon's scenes would have seen them playing full-fledged zombies instead of just actors pretending to be zombies — like Murray. Bacon's zombie was also scripted to move and fight to the beat of Kenny Loggins' "Footloose."

Reese and Wernick went on to explain why neither Bacon nor Van Damme ended up appearing in the film. Wernick says that it was Bacon's representatives who turned down the offer and that the actor himself was never actually given the scene, but Bacon apparently invited the writers out to breakfast after the film's release to share his admiration for it. Van Damme, meanwhile, had to pass because he was working on another film at the time, and Reese says he later heard that not appearing in "Zombieland" was one of Van Damme's greatest regrets.

Fortunately, while these versions of the scene would have been memorable in their own ways, they don't quite match the humor and delightful absurdity of the film's actual Bill Murray cameo.