Director Geroge A Romero seems to be living his life backwards. While his early career was marked by massive gaps between movies, now that he’s reached retirement age, he seems to be working harder them ever, with three new zombie flicks in the past four years (including the upcoming Survival Of The Dead).
Now the man who helped create the modern movie zombie with Night Of The Living Dead and its sequels, is preparing to mine his fascination with the living dead even further, with the announcement that Romero has signed a deal to write a book that will reveal the origin of the zombie plague. It’ll be Romero’s first novel, and he’s apparently been handed a $300,000 advance to write it and a sequel.
The Guardian reports that the book’s publisher has revealed the novel will tell “the full story behind the living dead: how they came to be [and] what they can and cannot do”. The story will apparently start in San Diego, when a corpse sits up and begins walking during a autopsy, before showing “glimpses of increasing chaos from around the globe”.
Although Romero’s most recent living dead movies have been rather lacklustre, we’re still interested to hear his take on how the undead started walking. There have been hints in the movies, but now we’ll just have to wait and see where Romero says his zombie universe really came from.