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Back in 1968, an unknown director named George A. Romero hit the ground running with a down and gritty black and white independent horror film called Night of the Living Dead. The story of zombies run amok in the world was a genuine pop culture phenomenon, saying as much (mayhap even more) about the still ongoing Vietnam War and tenuous race relations than any hoity-toity op-ed piece in the New York Times could ever hope to. It was as harsh as it was gloriously beautiful, a blood-soaked poem for a tumultuous time and it proved popular enough not only to officially launch Romero’s film career but also to ultimately lead to five sequels, each one as distinctive and individualistic as the original ’68 opus. With Romero’s passing in July of 2017, it was thought by some that the Living Dead canon was officially kaput. Not so, according to our brainy connoisseurs over at The Hollywood Reporter.
When Romero shuffled off for the Happy Hunting Grounds a few years back, he left behind not only a terrific legacy that extended even beyond his famed Living Dead films, but also a treatment which he co-wrote with Paolo Zelati for what he had envisioned as another chapter in the celebrated series of movies which was to be called Twilight of the Dead. Since his passing, the director’s widow Suzanne Romero has been developing a script with a trio of scribes fashioned in best Dr. Frankenstein-style from the left-behind treatment. The project has advanced far enough according to our friends at The Hollywood Reporter that Romero is now planning on taking meetings with potential directors to bring her late husband’s final Living Dead effort to the silver screen.
In a press release, Suzanne Romero said that she had given her husband’s collaborator Paolo Zelati on the new story “my full blessing as long as I could be there every step pf the way for it to remain true to George’s vision. We had a solid treatment and the beginning of the script. I can 100 percent say that George would be incredibly happy to see this continue. He wanted this to be his final stamp on the zombie genre.”
Twilight of the Dead is, according to the summation released today, “set in a decimated world. Life has all but disappeared. But there still may be hope for humanity.”
This is bittersweet news for horror fans: George Romero’s passing left a big chasm in the world of popular culture, yet the news of one final Living Dead film that is set to conclude the story Romero himself originated in the final, hazy days of the 1960s is an unexpected gift, indeed.
