At one time the black sheep of George A. Romero's initial trilogy of living dead films, 1985's DAY OF THE DEAD has gone on to be appreciated as a classic – and to become the most remade and revisited film of Romero's career, outside of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. And while anyone can cash in on NIGHT because it's public domain, making new projects related to DAY actually requires official deals to be made. First there was an atrocious "prequel" called DAY OF THE DEAD 2: CONTAGIUM in 2005, then it was poorly remade in 2008, and poorly remade again in 2018.
We can only hope that a fourth attempt at going back to the concept of DAY OF THE DEAD is going to be the best one yet, because there is one coming.
Syfy has given a 10 episode straight-to-series order to a Day of the Dead TV show that's being produced by Cartel Entertainment and Blue Ice Pictures.
Written by showrunners Jed Elinoff and Scott Thomas, this take on DAY will tell the story of
six strangers trying to survive the first 24 hours of an undead invasion. This ode to Romero’s famous flesh-eaters reminds us that sometimes all it takes to bring people together is a horde of hungry zombies trying to rip them apart.
Which sounds more like NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD than DAY OF THE DEAD.
George Olson serves as showrunner alongside Elinoff and Thomas, and is producing the show with Lance Samuels and Daniel Iron. Executive producers are Stan Spry, Jeff Holland, and Drew Brown of Cartel Entertainment, and Robert Dudelson, James Dudelson, and Jordan Kizwani of HiTide Studios.
Cartel is also behind the Creepshow TV series on Shudder, and that gives me the only shred of hope I have for this Day of the Dead.