After a career of showing us the battle between the living and the undead, prolific horror writer-director George Romero is delving even deeper into what makes zombies become zombies. His next movie will be an adaptation of Dr. Steven Schlozman‘s The Zombie Autopsies, and both the author and the director will work together on the film. Schlozman, an actual physician, writes about zombies from both a medical and a psychological perspective, and that plus Romero’s 40 years of experience directing zombie movies means this will probably be the most amazing zombie movie ever made. That might be hyperbole, but it’s going to have to try really hard to be bad.
When The Zombie Autopsies came out this year, Romero — aka “Godfather of Zombies” — provided an enthusiastic endorsement, writing:
“I’ve written and made films about zombies for over forty years. In all that time, I’ve never been able to convince my audience that zombies actually exist. On page one of THE ZOMBIE AUTOPSIES, Steven Schlozman takes away any doubt. This fast-moving, entertaining work will have you chuckling…and worrying.”
Romero’s series of zombie movies — Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Land of the Dead, Diary of the Dead, and Survival of the Dead — traced a zombie epidemic across the world and focused on how people dealt with it as it spread. Some of the movies did touch on the scientific aspect of what caused the zombie outbreak, but it was mostly about the most basic sense of getting the hell away from the zombies and how we, as humans, work together and what happens to our relationships. The Zombie Autopsies, which takes a rather sterile and objective approach to how zombies work will give Romero an amazing new dimension to explore. However, while the book does take a more scientific approach, there is still a story there about a group of researchers who are desperate to find the cause of a zombie outbreak.
tl;dr: Schlozman + Romero = An incredibly intensive, well-rounded zombie movie.
Here is a short video of Schlozman discussing his book:
No other details have been provided about this movie, but you can watch this space for more details. In the meantime, you can read about The Zombie Autopsies on its official site.
(via Zombie Research Society)
