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George A Romero’s Empire Of The Dead Headed To Television

The undisputed king of the zombie movie George A Romero is set to bring his vision of the living dead to the small screen with upcoming series ‘Empire of the Dead.’

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Variety reports the news out of the Cannes Film Festival that production company Demarest are developing the TV show, which is an adaptation of an ongoing comic book series Romero has been writing for Marvel since 2014, set to reach its conclusion this August.

While set broadly within the same world and following the same rules as Romero’s existing zombie movies, ‘Empire of the Dead’ also incorporates vampires.

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Romero is without question the key figure in creating the zombie genre we know today with his enormously influential 1968 breakthrough ‘Night of the Living Dead,’ which broke new ground for horror movies with its graphic violence and overtones of social realism.

Most significantly, the key ‘rules’ of the zombie - that they return from the dead to eat the living, pass the virus via their bite, and can only be stopped by a shot to the head - were all of Romero’s creation.

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Romero would revisit this mythology with 1978′s equally influential ‘Dawn of the Dead’ and 1985′s comparatively underrated ‘Day of the Dead,’ then took an extended break from his signature subgenre before revisiting it (to somewhat lesser effect) with 2005′s ‘Land of the Dead,’ 2007′s ‘Diary of the Dead’ and 2009′s ‘Survival of the Dead.’

Though most closely associated with zombies, Romero’s impressive body of work includes equally unorthodox takes on witches and vampires in ‘Season of the Witch’ and ‘Martin,’ plus anthology horror classic and Stephen King collaboration ‘Creepshow,’ and thoroughly bizarre Arthurian biker movie ‘Knightriders.’

His son G Cameron Romero is currently at work on a ‘Night of the Living Dead’ prequel entitled ‘Origins.’

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There is no mention of whether the now 75-year old filmmaker will direct any episodes of ‘Empire of the Dead,’ but Romero and Peter Grunwald (his producer since 1988) will reportedly write and serve as executive producers on the show.

Nor is there any indication just yet as to what platform the series may be produced for - and, as such, we couldn’t say for sure how gruesome the show will be able to get if it winds up being made for US network television (although that’s never stopped ‘The Walking Dead’ getting pretty out there…)

Demarest’s Sam Englebardt and William D. Johnson will also produce.

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Picture Credit: Marvel, WENN