Day Of The Dead Remake Is Coming (Endless Groan)

By Nick Venable | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

day of the deadYou know, I hate how Hollywood and even indie-wood can get me all jived about certain projects and then make me want to force damnation on everything all at the same time. (Sadly, these examples are all remakes as well.) David Fincher remaking Utopia? I’m all about that. Gareth Edwards remaking Godzilla? I’m mostly on board, if only because I want to see another Gareth Edwards movie. But a remake of George Romero’s Day of the Dead? What the undead fuck, people?

I’m going to do everyone the favor of not reminding them about the depressingly bad Day of the Dead remake that already exists, directed by Steve Miner and starring Oscar-watcher Mena Suvari. (I just reminded you.) This new remake comes from the same ill-formed brainspace that gave the world the completely misguided remake Texas Chainsaw 3D, which came out earlier this year. Lati Grobman and Christa Campbell’s production company, Campbell Grobman Films, picked up the rights from that other remake’s production company, Taurus Entertainment, and are currently in the process of holding meetings with screenwriters over how to correctly come at adapting George Romero’s last great zombie movie. (His later movies were okay, not great, so keep those naysaying pants on.)

And just to give them a hint, the correct way to remake it is in their imagination, and not on film.

“Zombie movies are really popular right now, and we feel we could do this right,” said Campbell, a former actress who appeared in the 2008 remake that I keep mentioning. The duo want to prove that their minimal success with Texas Chainsaw 3D wasn’t a one-time deal. “We wanted to show that we didn’t just get lucky,” Grobman said. “It was a very calculated production.”

day of the dead
I calculate this happening to Campbell and Grobman.

They have ideas about how they want the film to go, and it includes honoring the original. “We want to keep it close to the Romero version as possible,” Campbell shared, “to make sure that his fans are happy. These are not going to be the zombies climbing walls and doing back flips like in World War Z.” If there’s anything to take away from her mentioning Marc Forster’s World War Z, it’s that she’s aiming to be different from a movie that managed to be completely different from the material it was adapted from. Granted, that was one of the reasons why everybody crapped all over that movie in pre-production, but still.

If you can’t tell, I’m completely against this. I was also wary of Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake, but at least that film had room to expand. Day of the Dead is a really tight, secluded film that takes place in an army bunker. Yes, everything including the military will be modernized, but nearly 30 years later, we’ve already seen a thousand other horror movies that ripped off different aspects of Romero’s film, and I just can’t see how any more remakes are going to help anything. If this film comes out and completely proves me wrong, I’ll eat my own brains. (Not really, but a pat on the back will be in order.)

Never watched the original? Check it out below. Not sure how it’s on YouTube, but catch it while it lasts.