Zebediah de Soto has been talking to STYD about his upcoming film, the 3-D CGI “remake” Night of the Living Dead: Origins, and by the sounds of it, de Soto is planning a movie on a much larger scale than the original:
I want to see a helicopter clipping its propeller on a building and careening into a crowd of people. Zombies going through the streets. A thousand people tearing each other apart, zombies tearing them apart, total chaos. One of the first horror films I owned was Night of the Living Dead, it made a huge impression on me. There are all of these interesting little back stories in terms of the other characters, but we only got to follow Barbara in the original. They were always describing these really big scenes, like Ben says a truck is chased down by a horde of zombies. I always wished I could have seen that.
It’s not a prequel. I loved Romero’s movie and there are so many people out there raping it to death, I didn’t want to be next in line to the gang bang. But I really wanted to do something that was a little creative but an homage to what he was doing. I want to see a zombie movie on the scale of [the Max Brooks novel] World War Z and the only thing I changed in terms of the terrain is that we go into New York City. This is a post-9/11 world we live in and how would people react to this if it really happened? How would they respond? For me, one of the things missing from zombie films is effects done on a level no one has ever seen before like Spider-Man or The Hulk. Those effects applied to a zombie film.
OK, so something along the lines of a Marvel blockbuster, in the scale of World War Z? Sounds like de Soto is looking to create something truly epic. Perhaps the next great zombie film:
I know so many people get pissed off about this movie being redone again, but it’s not the same regurgitated bullshit. We’re taking this seriously.
News has already broke that Danielle Harris (Halloween 4) has already been cast to star as Barbara. And de Soto already has Mos Def (Be Kind Rewind) in mind to play Ben:
I loved his performance in Monster’s Ball he’s great in that. His people responded, expressed interest and we sent some numbers to them. We’ll see.
Night of the Living Dead: Origins is currently in production at New Golden Digital. The film is scheduled for release in 2010.
