In a recent interview with Bloody Disgusting, director Steven Kostanski has opened up about SYFY’s upcoming series adaptation of George A. Romero’s classic horror film Day of the Dead, confirming that the 10-episode series will indeed have some ties to the original 1985 film. Kostanski also revealed that he has already completed filming the first four episodes of the upcoming series.
“I actually wrapped up working on that back in December; I ended up shooting the first four episodes of the show. So it’s a ten-episode series; it does have ties to the original movie. I can’t go into too many specifics, unfortunately. I’m not really allowed to say much of anything,” Kostanski said.
He also went on to share the process of making the episodes on a low-budget while also describe the project as weird and interesting, “It was a very scrappy, low budget affair, and I had a ton of fun making it. We got Masters FX to once again provide creature effects for it. So I can say that, at the very least, the zombies are super awesome. It’s a very weird, interesting show, that I don’t think is what people are going to be expecting. I had a ton of fun making it, and really utilized all my low-budget sensibilities to pull it off. It was another case of like, a very ambitious premise, with the bare minimum of resources. And I think that yielded a lot of great creativity from the team.”
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Romero’s film was the third in his six-film Dead series, which began with Night of the Living Dead in 1968 then continued with 1978’s Dawn of the Dead, 2005’s Land of the Dead, 2007’s Diary of the Dead, and 2009’s Survival of the Dead. Day of the Dead grossed $34 million worldwide upon its release and followed a group of scientists in the wake of a zombie plague working in an underground bunker trying to find a cure to the pandemic.
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The series for SYFY is described as an intense story of six strangers trying to survive the first 24 hours of an undead invasion. This story foundation appears to bear little resemblance to the plot of the Romero film and sounds more like a zombified take on the 24 formula.
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Day of the Dead will be written by Jed Elinoff and Scott Thomas (The Banana Splits Movie), who will also act as showrunners. It is produced by Stan Spry, Jeff Holland, Drew Brown for Cartel Entertainment (Creepshow), alongside Robert Dudelson, James Dudelson, and Jordan Kizwani from HiTide Studios.
A prequel to the film (with no involvement from the original creators) titled Day of the Dead 2: Contagium was released in 2005, followed closely by a very loose remake titled Day of the Dead in 2008. Another remake titled Day of the Dead: Bloodline was released in 2018. All three of these films were panned and are not considered canon with Romero’s cycle.
