When George A. Romero passed away last year, the godfather of the modern zombie movie had been producing a new instalment in his Dead series, Road of the Dead (which he described as “The Fast and the Furious with zombies), and while the status of that project seems to be up in the air since the filmmaker’s passing, Entertainment Weekly is reporting that we will be getting one more zombie tale from the filmmaker.
Prior to his death, Romero had been working on the novel The Living Dead on and off for around a decade, and according to EW, writer Daniel Kraus will now be putting the finishing touches to the book.
“Some of [the manuscript ] was in tremendous, publish-ready state, Other parts, near of the end of what he wrote, were sketchier, clearly intended to be fleshed out later. Only half the job I’m doing is finishing this book… The other half is putting George back together, in a sense – not just from reading his every obscure interview and analyzing his every obscure work, but also immersing myself in the art that he loved. I’m studying his favorite movies, watching his favorite operas, listening to his favorite music, all in an attempt to find in them the inspirations he might have found. I’m taking thematic and structural cues from these works and working them into the book. It’s not like having George next to me, but it’s what I have, and I’m treasuring every moment of it.”
As per EW, here’s the official synopsis for The Living Dead:
“On October 24th, John Doe rises from the dead. Assistant Medical Examiner Luis Acocella and his assistant Charlene Rutkowksi are vivisecting him when it happens, and so begins a global nightmare beyond comprehension.
“Greer Morgan is a teenager living in a trailer park, and when the dead begin their assault, the true natures of her neighbors are revealed. Chuck Chaplin is a pretty-boy cable-news anchor, and the plague brings sudden purpose to his empty life.
“Karl Nishimura is the helmsman of the U.S.S. Vindicator, a nuclear submarine, and he battles against a complete zombie takeover of his city upon the sea. And meanwhile, a mysterious woman named Etta Hoffmann records the progress of the epidemic from a bunker in D.C., as well as the broken dreams and stubborn hopes of a nation not ready to give up.
“Spread across three separate time periods and combining Romero’s biting social commentary with Kraus’s gift for the beautiful and grotesque, the book rockets forward as the zombie plague explodes, endures, and finally, in a shocking final act, begins to radically change.”
