It’s been slightly over a year now since legendary director George A. Romero passed away, but according to his wife Suzanne Desrocher-Romero, the Night of the Living Dead helmsman still has a whole heap of material that’s just waiting to see the light of day.
For one thing, Desrocher reports that efforts are currently in place to complete Romero’s novel The Living Dead, not to mention the many unrealized scripts he left behind.
“Dan [Klaus] is fervently rewriting as we speak,” Desrocher shared with ComicBook.com. “Also, George has many scripts. We have very many scripts that he’s written. And so, you just never know what’s gonna pop up.”
Before Romero’s passing, the filmmaker was working on what might have been one of the craziest projects of his decades-spanning career, with the man himself describing the pic titled Road of the Dead as “The Fast and the Furious with zombies.” If you’re curious to see what Romero meant by this, Desrocher says that the movie is still on its way, though there are plenty more screenplays where that came from.
“That’s in the works I think. I think it’s sputtered a little bit, but we’ll see what happens,” Desrocher confirmed about Road of the Dead. “But we have a lot. George was a prolific writer. He loved to write, and we have 40, 50 scripts that he’s written, and a lot of it is very good. He had a lot to say, and he still does, because I’m gonna make sure that he does. It’s my mission.”
While Romero is rightly remembered as a master of horror, the breadth of the auteur’s output wasn’t limited to one genre, and Desrocher apparently has plans to help restore one of the director’s lesser-known creations.
“We have a film that he shot in 1973 that most people haven’t seen. A handful of people have seen this film,” Desrocher admitted. “We’re gonna restore it, and we’re gonna show it to Romero cinephiles. It’s a scary movie, but it’s not a horror movie, and it’s about ageism. Anyway, he has a cameo in it, and it’ll be fun. And we’ll show the movie, or get it distributed. It’ll be a project that the foundation’s gonna do. I think it’s the first project we’re gonna do actually.”
Desrocher stresses once more that this scary work may not fit everyone’s preconceptions of a George A. Romero film, but it could prove a worthy find nonetheless.
“A lot of people are like, ‘Oh, my God, I can’t wait to see it.’ And I go, ‘It’s not a zombie movie now, remember.’ And what’s also terrific is that you see his footprint. You see how he shoots and the story. It’s a unique find. I’m so happy I have it.”
It may be a while before we get a concrete idea of when to expect these various projects to come into fruition, but it’s comforting to think that Romero’s contributions to cinema could continue for years beyond his passing.
