Land of the Dead: No Tom Savini, and more!

Initially we were negotiating with Fox to do this, and it just went on and on, about a year and a half, literally. One of those typical Hollywood negotiations. They wanted to call the new movie NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. Their thought was that they were starting over, this is a new franchise. And I said, "I already made NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. Gimme a break over here!"

 At the time, my title of DEAD RECKONING, that the title I preferred, but apparently there's an old Bogart movie with the same title. So they said, why don't we call it NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD: DEAD RECKONING? They wanted NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD in the title. I said, "Look, you can make reference to "Night of the Living Dead" all over the poster, why does it have to be in the title?" Turned out they wanted to own the franchise. It turned out that Richard Rubinstein, my ex-partner, had unbeknownst to any of us registered NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD with the MPAA. There was a time when he represented that film, he was trying to get a three-film set with DAWN and DAY, so we had to negotiate with Richard to get it back.

But it doesn't matter because of Mark Canton's new company Atmosphere. Mark was, by pure chance, was having lunch with my agent who was complaining about Fox. Mark said, "Let me see the script." He read the script that night, called me the next day with a deal. Not a development deal, but an actual deal. They said, we're shooting this movie. We just jumped on it. They are great guys over there. Mark loves movies. It's a great company to be working with.

I am getting the vibe that Romero is not to happy with Fox, but then do you blame him? Big studios tend to love to mess with good movies.. Thankfully romero is the MAN and does the right thing and sticks to his guns. When capone asked him about the basic premise here is what Romero had to say

The humans have this big armored vehicle they go out in loaded with big guns and shit. They go to all these nearby towns and hit the supermarkets and liquor stores for supplies. It's a little different than the previous films where the living would go out scouting for any survivors. They had enough supplies in those films. In this film, this is their way of life. They have these hard-ass guys that are volunteers and willing to take the risks.

No Tom Savini leading the effects team according to Romero

I don't think he's going to be in charge of the effects. Actually, it'll be one of his proteges, Greg Nicotero, who runs KNB that the producers wants. They want that kind of reliability and substance. Greg worked very closely with Tom on DAY OF THE DEAD, so I don't think there will be any animosity. I'd like to give Tom maybe one zombie character or a special appearance. But I'm also plugging for him to do a role. I have a perfect role for him, so I'd love to make that happen, but I don't have control over that this time with the bigger budget.