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Im basically the expert on this board on zombie movies so I'd be delighted to answer all your questions. The Remake of Dawn of the Dead is NOT, I repeat, NOT connected with the director of the original in any way atall. George A. Romero, one of the foremost masters in the horror genere did not remake Dawn of the Dead nor was he planning to. What happened was the original producer, Richard. P. Rubinstein sold to rights to Universal which passed it on to James Gunn to pen the remake. If any of you have not seen the original, I suggest you do bery much. Only thing is, if you do watch the original, FORGET COMPLETELY about the remake. It's a terrible remake considering the fact the original is known as one of the greatest (if not THE) horror films ever made (Roger Ebert-Chicago Sun Times) and started a new era in the horror genere known as "The Splatter" craze which the original special FX artist (Tom Savini (Friday the 13th, Vampyres, Creepshow 1 and 2, etc.) had so mouch to do with.
As for the Mess of a Consecutiveness, Dawn of the Dead the remake is #2 in three movies (theoretically) and the third is in plans to be remade also. (night of the living dead was remade in 1990 starring Tony Todd and Patricia Tallman and directed by Tom Savini and Written and Co-Produced by George Romero.) Unfortunately, even though Dawn of the dead was "A Remake" it was not a transtional sequal to the already re-made prequel Night of the living dead which I loved. (many people like the original NIGHT better. I think the remake is a better movie and more interesting to watch but the original is definetely scarier [first movie where all the main character's die] and was the first modern horror films so you really can't beat that hahaha).
And as for the new movie, George Romero had been looking to return to the dead for a long time and was very close when he was originally signed as the director of Resident Evil (He never directed it though because they didn't like his script which had more of a comic-video game feel so instead they fired him and ripped off all his movies so badly, it made me want to gag. He intended to make a sequel to his 1985 third-installment "Day of the Dead" which in-spite of it being the most violent movie ever made, was a huge dissapointment and financial failure. (The original script was not used because it was way too violent and consequently large sums of money were pulled from the project by its investors because of its financial risk [It's great though, better than the original "Dawn"]). George started looking for some new investors and found some in the Fox network which agreed to pay him the 10+ mill' he needed for his movie but had trouble raising. Romero wrote the script and originally titled it "Dead-Reckoning" (which I abhored) which is the same title as a an old Humphrey Bogart movie. Fox told him he couldn't use it (thank God) so he continued to redraft it. The script he settled on is very very good. So good, I didn't read most of it because I want it to be a surprise. It's very violent too. What happened was Fox was interfering with the project too much telling him to do this and do that (can you imagine the nerve of those ********?[which happens a lot when the movies budget rises above 10 million or so]) so he decided to keep looking around and is now in talks with John Carpenter to help make his movie. I think Carpenter wants to make the score and cast it as well ofcourse, produce it.
CURRENTLY,Romero is in pre or post-production with another movie called Diamond Dead that is in collaboration with the star of The Rocky Horror Picture Sow. I did not know however that Romero had already made a deal and scheduled to make it already. I know he wanted to make it in Pittsburgh where the majority of the other three were shot and had already scouted out locations but I think he said it may be too expensive (even though the places he wants to use are also owned by the people that own the mall in the original DAWN)
Last but not least, Lets talk style for a minute because someone asked about the zombies. Apprently the trend right now in the zombie-horror-genere is leaning more towards shock value replacing well written scripts. Dawn of the dead new, 28 Days later and House of the Dead are all evident of that. Romero is different because he never used the zombies as the main protaganists in the movie like they did in the remake of Dawn. It was always people that were the protagonists. Just doing this sets up his movies for better writing and social, religious, racial, structural, psychological, tradition commentary etcetera which made his movies more interesting then the other movies which all basically had a huge whole in the middle of the script where the direction of the movie was catch-22. This also evolved into having the zombies run around like mad men which is very hard to believe and phony. Since when can dead people run faster than living! Pure in-your-face shock value.
Also, that's a terrible title, isn't it?
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Last edited by Krackalackin; 07-22-04 at 12:15 AM.
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