George A. Romero's final zombie movie, Twilight of the Dead, is in development to be filmed and released posthumously thanks to Romero's widow, Suzanne. The seminal horror filmmaker effectively invented the zombie genre as viewers know it today, with many now-ingrained tropes stemming from Romero's original work. Romero passed away in 2017 at the age of 77 due to lung cancer.
Romero's first feature film was also his most influential: 1968's Night of the Living Dead introduced hordes of slowly walking corpses as a dread-inducing threat that has plagued protagonists in the years since it was first made. A low-budget independent film, Night of the Living Dead proved an unexpected success that spurred a six-movie franchise. The first four movies follow new characters as they navigate an apocalyptic world increasingly overtaken by the undead. The last two movies jump back in time to an earlier stage of the zombie pandemic and aren't meant to be viewed as sequels to the others. In 2015, Romero announced that he was collaborating on another installment in the franchise titled, Road of the Dead, with his friend Matt Birman, but the project never made it past the development stage.
Another Romero film will now see the light of day: Twilight of the Dead has been in the works for the past few years, according to THR. The movie will be based on an initial treatment that Romero had prepared with Paolo Zelati, who brought the project to Suzanne Romero after her husband's passing. Zelati, Robert L. Lucas, and Joe Knetter teased out a script based on Romero's concept with Suzanne's permission. Suzanne has plans to begin searching for a director and feels assured that the film will stay true to her late husband's creative legacy. Read what Suzanne said about the upcoming film below:
I gave [Paolo Zelati] my full blessing as long as I could be there every step of 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.
Zelati spoke on Romero's vision for how the series would end. He says this ending is more fitting for Romero's behemoth series, which, as of now, concludes in a way that the director did not intend. Zelati elaborated:
It is no secret that Diary and Survival were not the way he envisioned the series ending, and George knew it very well. Twilight of the Dead was his goodbye to the genre he created and wanted to go out with a powerful film.
The apocalyptic logline for Twilight of the Dead reads: "The story is set in a decimated world. Life has all but disappeared. But there still may be hope for humanity." According to Zelati, the idea for Twilight of the Dead stems from a conversation he and Romero had about where the zombies in Land of the Dead hypothetically go after the movie ends. Romero and Zelati began working on Twilight of the Dead with this question in mind.
Lucas says the movie will serve as the "final piece of the puzzle" in a series that has contributed to much of the lore around the undead in cinema. Because of the franchise's role in creating foundational elements of the zombie genre, Romero's final thoughts on the subject are invaluable to other horror filmmakers following in his footsteps. According to Suzanne Romero, Twilight of the Dead is the conclusion George Romero had planned for his magnum opus. With Zelati's knowledge of Romero's vision, completing the late director's final project is a fitting way to honor his massive impact on the horror genre.
Source: THR