Nearly three years ago, Vukota Brajovic and Milan Todorovic formed a production company to make the first Serbian zombie horror movie. Brajovic would act and Todorovic would direct; the latter told a local newspaper: "Almost all national cinematographies have a representative in the 'zombie' genre and we are, incidentally, pioneers for our nation." The young producers hoped to begin Zone of the Dead the following spring.

Securing financing took much longer than anticipated, but filming has finally begun. Arrow in the Head says that Ken Foree (original Dawn of the Dead) and Kristina Klebe (Halloween remake) will star; blogger Doba Nevinosti has photos of Foree at a press conference and Klebe on set (pictured). The official site has more information.

Taking its title from the colloquial name for an industrial zone that is the setting for the film, Zone of the Dead follows a police escort transporting a dangerous prisoner under armed guard. An ecological disaster has turned the local inhabitants into zombies, and an alliance with the prisoner may be the only way the survivors can get out alive. The producers cite George A. Romero as their top inspiration, and have ambitious plans for a trilogy. They also plan to set their flick apart from other Serbian films by not having any swearing. (?!!!) My goodness, what will victims scream when they're being torn apart and eaten alive?

[ Via ScreenDaily ]

For an emerging filmmaker, the Sundance Film Festival provides a starting point for the life span of a feature-length work. There's a far greater sense of immediacy, however, for the filmmakers involved in the shorts program, where a wide variety of material tends to begin circulating the festival world before fading into complete obscurity. That's why the short films that screened yesterday as part of the third annual Sundance Institute at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) signified the most important aspect of the two-week event: With few exceptions, the films on display received the kind of exposure that helped validate this frequently neglected format. While some of the titles are available on iTunes, many that were shown to a packed house finally got the long-delayed reception they deserved.

Animated efforts almost always offer the best ingredients in any shorts program, since it's here that you'll find a combination of inspired side projects from gainfully employed studio animators and the works of struggling independent artists. The latest program couldn't beat the sheer brilliance of cult animator Don Hertzfeldt's short Everything Will Be Ok in last year's showcase, but two particularly memorable films left distinct impressions this time around.

In case you weren't sure, Zombie Strippers is exactly what it sounds like: a horror comedy about zombified strippers. And like most zombie movies, it has political subtext, though you don't have to worry about it being headier than something titled Zombie Strippers should be. Sure, it claims to be based loosely on Eugène Ionesco's classic absurdist play Rhinoceros and, sure, it features allusions to a number of philosophers, including Camus and Sartre, but really it's dumb and silly and a heck of a good time. Particularly if you're anything but sober. And if you're just looking for a grindhouse sort of guilty pleasure to pass the time.

Zombie Strippers opens with a montage that sets the scene: it's sometime in the near future, and Bush has just been reelected to his fourth term. Already, we know this movie will be a complete farce, but the ludicrous exposition continues, explaining that government scientists have developed a virus that allows soldiers in Iraq to continue fighting after they're killed. Yes, these super soldiers are zombies, a minor twist on Joe Dante's anti-Bush short Homecoming, which was one of the more critically celebrated episodes of the cable series Masters of Horror, and which featured Iraq War casualties rising from the dead in order to cast their vote against Bush's reelection.

Now and then, an interview yields an unforgivably tantalizing piece of information -- and, while 9 times out of 10 these nuggets are pure, idle, meaningless crazy-talk, now and then they're just too good to ignore. So it is today, as Empire pulls a sidebar from their recent interview with Diary of the Dead director George A. Romero where he idly mentions that one of his dream projects is a stage adaptation of ... John W. Campbell's Who Goes There?, later filmed as The Thing from Another World. Later, of course, filmed as The Thing.

It turns out Romero's a huge fan of the 1951 iteration of the tale, citing it as a major influence: "It really worked, it really scared me." And that admiration isn't just academic; Romero notes, teasingly, that "I watched The Thing many, many times but there's a reason for that ... I keep trying to get hold of the rights and I'd love to do it as a stage play." Romero then goes on to offer his own take on how to make the live theatrical version a more visceral experience: "I'd love to freeze the whole audience ... first of all, we'd have to chill the whole theatre down to some sub-zero temperature."

Empire points out that in a universe that's already offered us Evil Dead: The Musical, a live play of The Thing doesn't seem like a stretch; I'd also add that Cronenberg's The Fly is also due to hit the boards in an operatic adaptation in July. In his interview with Cinematical, Romero mentioned that he's already working on following Diary of the Dead with a sequel -- and, since we're indulging in some crazy talk, which project would you rather see the director focus on: More zombies for moviegoers everywhere, or a (literally) chilling night of theater for the lucky denizens of one city?

What a quiet weekend for indie films! Two holdovers performed very well, while several newly-opened films faced difficulty in attracting audiences. In its second week of release, The Band's Visit (Sony Pictures Classics) expanded from seven to 13 theaters and enjoyed a per-screen average of $9,769, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo. The Israeli film may sound like a traditional culture-crossing crowd-pleaser (tiny Egyptian police orchestra gets lost en route to a gig, spends the night in a tiny rural Israeli town, everyone learns important life lessons), but the material is deftly handled to produce a very satisfying and thoughtful entertainment.

Also in its second week out, In Bruges (Focus Features) stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as hit men cooling their heels in Belgium after a job gone wrong. James Rocchi said it moves "in unexpected directions which are the kind of unexpected that you do not actually expect." Specialty audiences turned out in good numbers to see it, to the tune of $8,178 per screen at 112 locations.

Diary of the Dead, George A. Romero's first independent zombie film in over 20 years, follows a group of student filmmakers who, making a low-grade horror film in the woods, drive back to civilization ... only to find it isn't there anymore. We watch the film unfold as footage they shoot travelling through desolate and deadly buildings, neighborhoods, towns, cities -- coming to grips with the fact that the dead are walking and hungry and everything they knew is over. Shot outside of Toronto, where Romero now lives (but, as tradition demands, set near Pittsburgh), Diary of the Dead played both the Toronto and Sundance Film Festivals; Scott Weinberg's review from Toronto can be found here, while Jette Kernion's review is here.

Writer-director George A. Romero spoke with Cinematical about his zombie film legacy that stretches back to 1968's Night of the Living Dead, his concerns about the possibilities and perils of user-generated media, which Presidential candidate he thinks would have the best handle on attacking armies of the dead, and the undying popularity of the undead he created. " (If) I created anything ... it was the "neighborhood zombie" ... the guy with Nikes and a sweatshirt. ... Neighbors are scary, and when they're dead they're a bit scarier. But once you have that, it's idiomatic ... I half expect the zombies to show up on Sesame Street hanging out with The Count. ..."

Cinematical: I've read several notes and quotes from you saying that Diary of the Dead essentially felt like a new beginning.

George A. Romero: For me, it was a new beginning; I made four zombie films before this, and they sort of tracked, they were along a single storyline, even though they were 10 years or more apart, each of them. And they were just getting too big. The last one (George A. Romero's Land of the Dead) was a studio-supported film, which, you know, I turned around and looked at it: They let me make the film I wanted to make, I loved working with Dennis Hopper and Leguizamo and people like that, but I felt the film and I had sort of lost connection with the origin of the series, which was a little guerrilla movie that a bunch of amateurs made in Pittsburgh all those years ago. And I wanted to go back to ... I wanted to see if I had the chops and the stamina to make a little guerilla movie. I happened to have an idea that I wanted to do something ... all of my zombie films have had this kind of socio-political satire underneath them, and I've always used them as snapshots of the time in which they were made.

I got an idea that I wanted to do something about emerging media, with the mainstream losing its power and Joe Blow from Oshkosh taking over on the blogosphere. And it all sort of fell into place. And I thought 'Well, I can make a little film, do it pretty inexpensively, about students who are out shooting a student film when the sh*t hits the fan, when zombies sit up and start walking around.' I said 'We can go back to the very first night, and we can try to pretend ' -- even though that was 1968 and this is now --- 'that this is the same first night, when this phenomenon first begins to happen.'

In case you haven't enjoyed enough movies about zombies and the undead lately, Diary of the Dead supplies you with yet another opportunity. However, this low-budget film is from the guy who first introduced most of America to the horrors of the walking dead: George A. Romero, who made Night of the Living Dead back in 1968. (So the zombie genre is the same age I am. Cool!)

Diary of the Dead isn't a sequel to the other movies in Romero's Dead series, but it does tend to assume that you know Romero's standard operating rules about zombies. If a zombie bites you or if you die in any way, that's it for you -- you're undead. The undead are cannibalistic, and the only way to destroy them is to destroy their braaaaains. Unlike the other Dead movies, this one is shot as if it were a documentary -- a survivor has pieced together footage from the first night that the dead come back to life.

I love George A. Romero for what my Cinematical colleague Ryan Stewart does not -- the "symbolism bat," which allows Romero the freedom to use zombies to comment on whatever he wants. To me, that's a strength, not a weakness. Plus, Dawn of the Dead made me afraid of shopping malls, Day of the Dead made me claustrophobic and Land of the Dead made me wish I didn't work for a corporation.

His latest, George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead, debuted at Toronto and fairly well divided audiences. I've heard from supporters, detractors and those in the middle -- Scott Weinberg was on the positive side -- but I can't wait to see it for myself. And hey! Romero made it completely independently, so that's in his favor. Jason Morgan at AMC's Monsterfest blog points to Box Office Mojo, which lists a release date of February 15, 2008. (Our friends at Moviefone also have this release date.) However, neither The Weinstein Co. site nor the film's MySpace page confirm the date yet, so plan your life accordingly.

Another independent horror film just found its leading lady. Brittany Murphy has signed to star in the psychological horror flick 3:30 a.m., according to Variety. Murphy has dipped her feet into the horror pool in the past (The Prophecy II, Cherry Falls, arguably Don't Say a Word). Mick Davis wrote and will direct 3:30 a.m., which is "about a young woman who leaves Gotham after the death of her father to work in a country hotel." The film is said to explore "the connection between dreams and reality." Davis is credited as a co-writer of The Invisible, one of the worst-reviewed movies of the year, but also wrote the original Swedish version; he is currently filming Dylan, starring Kevin McKidd as the Welsh writer Dylan Thomas. 3:30 a.m. is scheduled to begin filming in January 2008.

Zombies appeared in movies early on, in White Zombie (1932), I Walked with a Zombie (1943), The Last Man on Earth (1964), and -- to some extent -- Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959). But the infectious, flesh-eating, undead creatures we know today originated in George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968). No other horror movie was such a cornerstone, breaking new ground for its time, establishing the hard and fast rules for an entire subgenre and remaining a much-copied source nearly 40 years later. On top of all this, it's actually a great film, and hardly dated at all. When I first saw it, all alone in a dark room late at night, it gave me the shivers. But it also gave me food for thought.

Many have studied the complex relationship between the film's human characters, all trapped in an abandoned house trying to survive the night. Barbara (Judith O'Dea), after losing her brother to a zombie, becomes nearly catatonic. She's like the child of this twisted family. Ben (Duane Jones) is the leader, and though Romero apparently hadn't written the role for a black man, he evokes echoes of the Civil Rights movement that was brewing at the time. Harry Cooper (Karl Hardman) is white, middle-class America, with a wife, Helen (Marilyn Eastman) and a daughter (Kyra Schon). And Tom (Keith Wayne) and Judy (Judith Ridley) are typical teenagers, hoping to get married and settle down. It's easy to see all kinds of social commentary within this group of characters and their behavior, but even without all that, the film works very simply as a dramatic clash of personalities.

Zombie fans, rejoice! (We hope.) George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead was picked up by The Weinstein Co. Tuesday night, according to indieWIRE. The Weinsteins took North American rights, plus Mexico. Now here's the (potentially) good news: The Hollywood Reporter says "several offers were considered, including some for video-only distribution. The Weinstein Co. deal includes a theatrical commitment." The deal closed somewhere in the range of $2 million to $2.5 million.

In his recent review, our own Scott Weinberg says: "The creator of the zombie genre has popped back up with a new indie flick that's sure to entertain anyone who's followed the guy's career for the past 30-some years. ... It's a stand-alone and entirely fresh take on the inevitably impending zombie apocalypse." Like Scott, I'm a long-time fan of Romero, but when I read the TIFF program description (film students making a horror flick document dead people coming back to life), I was afraid that it sounded too much like just another faux documentary, but the reviews in general have agreed with Scott and been quite positive.

The film screens at TIFF one more time on Friday night, September 14. It has also been announced as the opening night presentation of Fantastic Fest in Austin on Thursday night, September 20. Beyond that, it's a crap shoot, frankly, considering that the Weinsteins are so unpredictable with genre fare. Zombie fans everywhere in North America and Mexico are hoping that the Weinsteins will give Diary of the Dead a wide release, and not just a delayed, unpublicized, contractually-obligated release in a minimum of locations before it hits DVD. Nothing beats a cinema filled with people screaming and laughing at a really good horror flick.