Back in 1968, George A. Romero made his feature directorial debut with one of the greatest horror movies ever made, Night of the Living Dead – and while doing so, he also introduced the world to flesh-eating ghouls that became a new definition for the world “zombie.” Romero, who passed away in 2017, went on to make several more zombie movies over the decades. Now his daughter Tina Romero is set to make her own feature directorial debut – and, fittingly, her first movie is a zombie movie. The title: Queens of the Dead.
Tina Romero told Fangoria, “My dad’s zombies were always reflecting what was going on in the world, and I almost feel a responsibility to take the torch and keep the Romero zombie alive, upholding, respecting, paying homage to it, while also introducing myself and my own voice as a filmmaker, and my own perspective. Which is different from his.” She revealed that the screenplay she wrote with novelist and comedian Erin Judge “takes place over one night, at the beginning of the dead rising. We find ourselves at a big warehouse party in Bushwick. We’ve got a party promoter for whom everything’s going wrong, and her lead act has dropped out, so she needs to call upon a friend — a retired drag queen — to resurrect his drag, to come and save the night. And it turns out to be a night of many resurrections. And our motley crew of characters find themselves holed up in a Bushwick nightclub, having to decide ‘do we get out of here or do we board the place up?’ And they’ve got to survive the night. It’s about a group of non-fighters finding the survival skills deep within.“
Romero aims to deliver “a fun ride that’s packed with some good jump scares, and some yummy gore and some pretty amusing characters” while playing by the zombie rules established by her father: “slow moving, one bite turns you, got to take out the brain, a little lingering sense of humanity.” There will be some “new flavor” to her zombies at the same time, though, and she’s going to make sure that Queens of the Dead is authentic to her own artistic sensibilities. “My perspective on the world is female, it’s queer, and it’s very dance-y. And I describe what I’m going for as a ‘glam gore zom-com.’“
Romero confirmed that she had the chance to tell her father about her zombie movie idea before he passed away, and
Queens of the Dead is scheduled to start filming this month, aiming for a 2025 release. The film is being produced by Natalie Metzger and Matt Miller.
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