Every once in a blue moon, an entertainment property comes along that is nearly impossible to introduce properly without just jumping right on top of it. Such is the case here and now, as action movie and TV icon Chuck Norris is teaming up with rapper and TV home renovator Vanilla Ice and other ‘90s-centric celebs for a new film — pronounced with two syllables here: fill-um — that already sounds like the spiritual successor to the Sharknado franchise. I’m talking ‘bout a movie called Zombie Plane! I know somebody out there is applauding.
Despite the title potentially bringing horror vibes to mind, Zombie Plane is being described by THR as exactly what one would hope: an action-comedy. And it’s one in which the Walker, Texas Ranger vet will be playing a version of himself as Commander Chuck Norris, an authority figure within a secret government organization whose central purpose is recruiting celebrity agents to help save the country in the face of a zombie invasion. Dun. Dun. DUN!
You better believe that Vanilla Ice will be playing himself as one of Norris’ secret agents who isn’t afraid to lay that funky smackdown. He presumably likes his mics rocked like a vandal, not stirred. I’ll say it now: I am going to feel like we all lost something if Zombie Plane doesn’t have Norris saying “Yo, Vanilla, kick it one time, boyeee,” before then decapitating a zombie with a flying roundhouse. At least I’ll have that one in my imagination now, even if it doesn’t happen on the screen.
Australian singer, actress, and reality TV star Sophie Monk was also announced as part of the cast for the new project, and if you’ve picked up on the trend, you’ll have already realized Monk will also be playing herself. Quite a few other celebrities are being touted for cameo appearances, though exactly who will possibly remain a mystery until the film is released.
It sounds like the cameos will be bolstered by a bunch of fun needle drops, as the soundtrack will be populated with ‘90s hits, and Vanilla Ice has more than one track in the mix, because hell yeah, he does. “Ice Ice Baby” will obviously be one of them, and I’m hoping another will be his “Ninja Rap” from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze. Sure, the rights are probably blocked or are too expensive, but this is the kind of project where dreams are made real, so I might as well hope to see Vanilla perform with the Turtles again.
Zombie Plane already filmed earlier in 2023 in Australia, with a director duo in Lav Bodnaruk and Michael Pier of the post-production and VFX company Chop Shop Post. Executive producer Shaked Berenso, whose Entertainment Squad previously produced Turbo Kid and Tales of Halloween, had this to say about the new movie:
Zombie Plane uses comedy, the zombie genre and ’90s nostalgia as a vehicle, to comment on pop-culture as much as it feeds it, creating unforgettable one-liners and situational comedy ‘to the extreme.’
Chuck Norris and his manliest of mustaches are making a relatively rare return to the screen for this project, following his appearance in Hawaii Five-0’s series finale in 2020. He supplied some voice work for the 2023 video game Crime Boss: Rockay City, but otherwise was last seen in scripted projects for a 2015 episode of The Goldbergs and 2012’s The Expendables 2. (It’s probably best that he skipped the critically panned Expend4bles.) At 83, his screentime will presumably be of a limited nature, but maybe we’ll see him get into a dance-off with Vanilla Ice, Sophie Monk, and whatever boy band members signed on to appear.
Plans are in place for Zombie Plane to be shopped around in November, so we’ll hopefully have news relatively soon for when we might see a zombie apocalypse brought to its metaphorical knees by martial arts and white-boy rap. In the meantime, there are plenty of other upcoming movie releases on the way that tragically cannot boast the above cast members.
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Khushi Patel is a science fiction author who lives in Austin, Texas. She has published three novels, and her work has been praised for its originality and imagination. Khushi is a graduate of Rice University, and she has worked as a software engineer. She is a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America, and her books have been nominated for several awards.
