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What George A. Romero Meant to Horror and His Fans

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Just when you thought 2017 couldn’t suck any harder than it already does, we lose another massive legend. We lost George A. Romero today and I still haven’t processed it. I knew I wanted to write something for him but I found myself just staring at the screen wondering where to even start.

It’s easy for people to say, “He just made movies, why are you so upset?” We’re upset because he didn’t JUST make movies and his movies weren’t JUST movies. This man created a genre, a movement.  He made a community and a fandom. Whether you loved his movies or hated them, his legacy is undeniable.

The reason you think of flesh-eater when you think of a zombie is because of George A. Romero. Before him, zombies were the product of voodoo and magic. A stolen soul used to be a slave. He single handedly changed an entire genre. He’s the reason we have The Walking Dead. He’s the reason for any zombie walk you’ve ever been to and any zombie video games you’ve played. The father of flesh-eaters. He made the brain-eating, shambling, decomposing hordes that we know of as zombies today.

George A. Romero

Georgeo A. Romero and Stephen King. Image courtesy of Pinterest

I first encountered his work when I saw his collaboration with Stephen King for Creepshow as a child. It was one of the reasons I love horror so much. It was scary, goofy and gorgeous. It still gives me the creeps to this day. I then fell in love with Night of the Living Dead. I had old copies, new copies, copies with Elvira commentary. The combination of that movie and Resident Evil made me the zombie fanatic I am today. And the reason Resident Evil has flesh eaters is due to his creation of the entire genre!

I had the pleasure of meeting him almost a decade ago. I traveled to Texas just for the five minute interaction I would get with him. He was one of the nicest people you’d ever meet and always made time for fans. He never hurried them; never made them feel like just a number in line and always had some conversation and a smile when it was their turn to step up.

Many of you have read from us that he was making a new movie called Road of the Dead and the artwork was released less than two weeks ago. The fate of the movie is unknown at this time but I can only hope that Matt Birman continues what he and Romero started and was excited about. Part of me thinks that he knew this would be his last movie and wanted to go out doing what he loved and what he was known for.

George A. Romero

George with his daughter on the set of “Day of the Dead” with Howard Sherman. Image courtesy of OldPicturesArchive

When it was announced that he was making a new movie, so many people (myself included) were so damn excited. It has been so long since Survival of the Dead. Along with the excitement came the people who complained about how “his movies sucked” or how “he should have quit after Day of the Dead.” But if George A. Romero gave the naysayers anything, it was the opportunity to bitch about something at least, and it never bothered him in the slightest.

George A. Romero

Image by Anne Cusack /Los Angeles Times

His movies were important. Night of the Living Dead had a black lead in 1968! I remember listening to him talk about it. He said that he had the finally finished reel of film being transported in the trunk of his car when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot.

He used Dawn of the Dead to mirror the rise of commercialism in society and used The Crazies to talk about the Vietnam War and the distrust of the military during that time. Diary of the Dead zoned in on our dependency on technology. The list goes on…

I can’t even begin to describe how much this man will be missed by so many. He brought us together: to think, to dress up, to debate, to make friends, to be scared and to laugh. He touched so many lives not just as a filmmaker but as a person. From all of us here at iHorror and around the world…we’re going to miss you George A. Romero, so much.

George A. Romero

Image courtesy of Cinema Blend

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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

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It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

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Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

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Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

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