I was just about to mention Graal & Truffle when I saw your post! I wasn't aware of ZipPy but it looks promising! Java 9 will provide a proper interface for Graal through JVMCI and is only 37 days away from GA [1]. With Graal supposedly only months away from GA [2], ZipPy may very well prove to be the future of high performance Python.

[1] http://www.java9countdown.xyz/ [2] https://www.infoq.com/presentations/polyglot-jvm-graal (see roughly 42:00 - 47:00)

EDIT: Wording.