Romero's Diary of the Dead Still on Track

Arrow in the Head, and several other sites reported on October 5 that George Romero, the 66 year old auteur behind Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, The Crazies and several other damn fine terror flicks, had collapsed and been hospitalized for a non life threatening illness. As a result, Romero had to cancel several personal appearances and shooting of his new zombie film Diary of the Dead (mentioned previously here on Cinematical) was to be delayed by at least two months. However, a new report from Dread Central says the film is still on track with Romero at the helm and will probably have begun production by the time you read this.

This new film is said to be something of a cross between a standard Romero zombie film and The Blair Witch Project: While making a low budget horror film, several young filmmakers find themselves in the midst of a real zombie outbreak. The crew proceed to record the event for posterity, taking themselves into the thick of the zombie action. As the director told Dread Central when the project was first announced, "I want to do this from a subjective kind of view with no music. You know, something really raw. So it's kind of a stylistic experiment, a low-budget, under the radar kind of thing that's just sort of from the heart." There has been some talk that this film might go straight to DVD, and although that might carry a certain stigma, I think that might be gutsy move on the part of Romero and his distributors. This way he could make as gory a film as he wants, and it's kind of reminiscent of Romero and company's decision to circumvent the MPAA by releasing Dawn of the Dead unrated.