Backstreet Boys and ‘NSYNC Starring In Zombie Western Movie Written By Nick Carter

The Backstreet Boys and ‘NSync are teaming up for a very good cause — they’re going to save the Wild West from the walking dead.

Rolling Stone reports that a few members from the popular ’90s boy bands are working on another wacky but wonderful movie for the Syfy channel. It’s being produced by The Asylum, the company behind the Sharknado movies. However, the Backstreet Boys and ‘NSync will be facing a fin-less threat that doesn’t fly: zombies.

Many years ago, a Backstreet Boys or ‘NSync concert would have been the perfect place for zombies to enjoy a feeding frenzy. However, the guys aren’t going to be pop stars in their movie, which is titled Dead 7. Based on what Nick Carter (the blonde Backstreet Boy) said about the “zombie Western futuristic horror movie,” it’s going be a mash-up of The Walking Dead and The Magnificent Seven.

Nick Carter is writing the movie, which is about a “ragtag band of gunslingers” who team up to battle the undead. Unfortunately, Carter didn’t explain what the movie’s futuristic element is. Howie Dorough and A.J. McLean are the other two Backstreet Boys who have signed on for Dead 7, and McLean is playing a villain. Joey Fatone is the only member of ‘NSync who is currently linked to the movie. He says he’s been “typecast” as “the drunk,” so perhaps Carter is still a bit angry with Fatone for the comments he made about BSB last year.

Self-professed horror fan Nick Carter says that he’ll be playing the hero, and he hopes that he can convince a few other pop stars to join the Dead 7 cast. The singer revealed that he’s thinking about offering a role to his Nick & Knight collaborator, New Kids on the Block singer Jordan Knight. There’s no word on whether Carter has reached out to any former members of the Spice Girls, and it seems highly unlikely that Justin Timberlake will join the movie now that he’s starred in critically-acclaimed films like The Social Network and Inside Llewyn Davis.

“Nick’s vision is to bring some other people in that genre that have never really done a lot of film but that were in music in the Nineties and 2000s,” Joey Fatone said. This means that you also shouldn’t look for Mark Wahlberg, the artist formerly known as Marky Mark.

The members of the Backstreet Boys and ‘NSync wouldn’t be the first pop stars to appear in a Syfy movie. Former Sugar Ray frontman Mark McGrath starred in Sharknado 2: The Second One last year, and ’80s icons Tiffany and Debbie Gibson got in a catfight in a 2011 flick titled Mega Python vs. Gatoroid. Perhaps Nick Carter can learn something about making a successful Syfy flick from the Entertainment Weekly critique of that mess of a movie.

“It called attention to how bad, campy, and trashy it was; the actors did everything except wink coyly at the camera. This is bad, because the key to enjoying these junky films is for us to be able to laugh at how ludicrous they are, while everyone in the film itself is behaving as though real lives are at stake, that real danger is at hand.”

At least Nick Carter has a little experience with the undead — he and the rest of the Backstreet Boys formed a monster squad in the music video for “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back).” Unfortunately, there were no zombies to fight, but Nick was a mummy and Howie was a vampire. Boy band fans can only hope that Dead 7 is just as fun.

[Image credit: Imeh Akpanudosen/Getty]