Jesse Eisenberg says 'Zombieland 2: Double Tap' took 10 years to be made because they were waiting for a "great" idea.

Jesse Eisenberg

Jesse Eisenberg

The 35-year-old actor says the decade long hold-up on the hotly-anticipated horror-comedy sequel was simply because the film's writing team were waiting for a plot that people were "going to love" and explained they didn't want to "capitalise" on the success of the 2009 movie unless they had the perfect idea.

In an interview with the Toronto Sun newspaper, Jesse said: "We would never have made another one if we didn't think it was going to be great. They wrote a ton of scripts for this movie and we went through a lot of different ideas.

"Finally, we have something I think people are going to love. I hesitate trying to characterise it now, but we are all very happy.

"We didn't want to do a typical sequel to try and capitalise on something that was popular. We waited 10 years until we had a great idea."

The film will see the 'Social Network' star return as Columbus alongside Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin who all reprise their roles from the original movie.

Luke Wilson, Zoey Deutch and Rosario Dawson have been confirmed as new characters, but it is not yet known who they will play.

Jesse previously gave an update on shooting and said the project is going "really well" and that the cast are working "so hard" to replicate the positive fan reaction that the first movie garnered.

He said: "It's going really well. Just resting on our laurels and being really cocky!

"No, the opposite. We're working so hard. It's one of these movies that, people loved it for personal reasons. So it's not just a big hit movie. People love it for personal reasons so you want to make sure it's as funny and as personal as the other one."