You may be surprised to learn that there’s a new remake of George Romero’s Day of the Dead in the works, given that there was already a remake released in 2008. Here’s the thing, though: Shut up. Don’t you ever talk about that movie again. It was a horrible, direct-to-video cash-in on the general feeling of goodwill toward Zack Snyder’s remake of Dawn of the Dead, which was a pretty decent movie except for the whole fast-moving zombie thing.
This new remake is being helmed by Mark Tonderai, whose most notable prior credit was directing House at the End of the Street. That movie was not very good at all, but it did have Jennifer Lawrence in it, so a bunch of people probably went to go see it anyway. That was apparently enough to earn Tonderai the new gig, but it is definitely not enough to inspire any confidence that the third time will be the charm for this particular tale of the living dead. (Hey, you know what? The first time was the charm. Leave it alone, Hollywood.)
While Day of the Dead has never quite enjoyed the popularity of Night of the Living Dead or Dawn of the Dead, it did have a few things going for it. For starters, the zombie makeup was much improved compared to the somewhat laughable blue faces of Dawn of the Dead. And also, it had Bub, perhaps the most beloved zombie of all time (besides your Aunt Bea, bless her heart).
The plot of the film centered around the tension between a group of scientists and soldiers holed up in an underground bunker as they argued about whether to experiment on zombies or blow them all sky high. As you can imagine, the zombies eventually made the argument a moot point as they chomped, chomped, chomped their way through braniac and meathead alike. It’s unknown how faithful to the original this re-remake will be, or whether its zombies will move slowly like zombies are supposed to or if they will move fast, because you know….kids these days.
There’s no word yet on when this new Day of the Dead will go into production, which means for now you’ll just have to watch one of the billion or so other zombie-based entertainment options at your disposal. First-world problems and all that.
