Movies

Watch 5 Clips From MAGGIE Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger And Abigail Breslin

By Michelle McCue | May 4, 2015

“This is the most human zombie film you have ever seen,” said Schwarzenegger of his new film MAGGIE – in theaters this Friday, May 8.

MAGGIE is the directorial debut from British director Henry Hobson. The film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Abigail Breslin and Joely Richardson.

By the time a necrotic viral pandemic spread cross- country to small town America and infected the film’s titular character, 16-year-old MAGGIE (Breslin), authorities had established a protocol for patients infected with the deadly virus: they are removed from society and taken to special isolation wards to complete the agonizing and dangerous transformation into one of the walking dead.

The authorities do not speak about what happens after that. Wade Vogel (SCHWARZENEGGER) is not ready to give up his daughter.

After weeks of searching for Maggie when she runs away following her diagnosis, Wade brings his daughter back to her home and family – stepmother, Caroline (RICHARDSON), and her two children - for whatever time may be left as the teenager begins an excruciatingly painful metamorphosis.

Having lost Maggie’s mother years earlier, Wade is determined to hold on to his precious daughter as long as he can, refusing to surrender her to the local police who show up with orders to take her.

As the disease progresses, Caroline decides to take their two younger children and move out, leaving Wade alone with Maggie to watch helplessly as she suffers.

© Getty Images Entertainment

On April 22nd, the film had it’s World Premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. Schwarzenegger said, “this is something very new for me, and for the zombie genre. It was so different I didn’t just want to star I wanted to produce, which I normally never do.”

Watch the latest clips below.

Based on an original screenplay by first‐time screenwriter John Scott 3, which made the industry’s 2011 Blacklist for best unproduced screenplays, MAGGIE marks the feature film directorial debut of renowned graphic designer, commercial and title sequence director, Henry Hobson, as well as the first time Schwarzenegger has starred in or produced a low-budget, independent film.

“When my team brought me this script and told me it was on the Blacklist, meaning it is one of the best scripts that hasn’t been made, I was intrigued,” said Schwarzenegger. You’re used to seeing me play the ‘ubermensch’, the action hero bullets can’t seem to hit. In Maggie, I am the everyman, a stoic farmer dealing with the most basic concerns‐ protecting his family, and savoring every last second with his daughter.”

“We’ve seen the zombie hordes and machine guns in other movies – it all seems like an unbelievable future. Maggie makes the disease real by shrinking the world of the movie to focus on one family, in the middle of nowhere, on their wasted farm. When I read it, I knew I had to do it. It is more vulnerable than any role I have played, more real, more emotional.”

Abigail Breslin who portrays the film’s title character sees the virus as just another indiscriminate disease or contagion that turns one’s daily life into a waking nightmare.

Breslin said she wanted the opportunity to portray the infected teen because she’s seen the horrible loneliness illness can bring.

“I really connected to the story because I’ve had friends who were really sick,” said the 19-year- old acclaimed actress, who made her big screen debut at age five in M. Night Shyamalan’s 2002 blockbuster film SIGNS.

“I didn’t see MAGGIE as a zombie movie, but rather a movie about a disease and the isolation of being sick. I thought it was something I could really go full force into and take my time with the character. Our film is a humanization of zombies. Maggie’s not a monster. She goes in and out of her animalistic behaviors as the virus takes over. There are scenes with her friends that offer moments of relief from her isolation and sadness, the fact she’s dying. These are glimpses of what her life should be like. Then, we come back heavier than before because it’s all changing, it’sall going away.”