SYFY recently gave a 10-episode series order to a new take on George A. Romero’s “Day of the Dead,” with Steven Kostanski (The Void, Leprechaun Returns, Psycho Goreman) directing four episodes. Speaking with Bloody Disgusting’s Boo Crew Podcast this week, Kostanski teased the ties to the original film and the “awesome zombies” we’ll meet in the series.
But first, some official plot details to get us started here…
“Written by Jed Elinoff and Scott Thomas, who also will showrun, Day of the Dead is the intense 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.”
Kostanski told The Boo Crew in this week’s brand new episode, “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.”
“It was a very scrappy, low budget affair, and I had a ton of fun making it,” he continued. “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.”
George Romero’s 1985 classic was followed by an unofficial prequel in 2005 as well as two different remakes in 2008 and 2018, none of which were able to hold a candle to Romero’s masterful work. Needless to say, there’s a pretty low bar in place for all things Day of the Dead at this point. Here’s hoping Kostanski and the team can raise it a little bit this year.
You can listen to The Boo Crew’s full chat with Steven Kostanski below.
