At this year’s Comic-Con@home, SyFy dropped the first trailer for its new series, Day of the Dead —the ultimate love letter to the godfather of zombies, George A. Romero.
Somehow I missed the news last February that SyFy had greenlit a TV reboot of George A. Romero’s classic 1985 zombie horror film, Day of the Dead —just before the widespread onset of a deadly global pandemic, no less. And somehow the particular series managed to get into production despite all the shutdowns. SyFy dropped the official trailer with regard to the ten-episode series during a panel at Comic-Con@home, with the planned premiere date this October, just in time for Halloween. You can watch the full 45-minute panel here .
The original Day from the Dead was the third in a trilogy of films that launched a new franchise, preceded by Night of the Living the Dead (1968) and its sequel, Dawn of the Dead (1978). Romero originally envisioned Day of the Lifeless as the Gone With the Wind of zombie movies, but disagreements with the studio over a proposed R-rating—Romero wanted typically the film to be unrated—meant that the director ended up with half his original budget (about $4 million). He was forced to scale back his vision substantially, so much of the film takes place in a secure underground bunker in the Everglades, where tensions rise between the scientists and soldiers on-site.
Romero has said that Day of the Dead is his favorite within the franchise, although it has the lowest “fresh” rating (83 percent) on Rotten Tomatoes associated with the initial trilogy. It only grossed $34 million worldwide (mostly from VHS, DVD, and Blu-Ray releases), but it still left its mark on popular culture. The pseudo-civilized zombie “Bub” made a cameo on a S4 episode of The Walking Dead as one of the “walkers” encountered in a railroad tunnel. And within Stranger Things S3 (set in 1985), this teens all sneak into some sort of mall theater to watch an early screening of Day time of the Dead . Three more films in the franchise were released in 2005, 2007, plus 2009, and Night of the Living Dead II is currently in production, slated for a 2022 release. Three of the original cast members from Time of the Dead will reprise their roles inside that film.
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