Zombies Move to West End

A movie shooting right now in the Poconos is part of a planned series of feature-length motion pictures that will carry the “Zombie Killers” tag in the title.

It’s part of the ever-growing genre of movies about the undead that seemed to gain life ironically enough in Pennsylvania when George Romero shot “Night of the Living Dead” in 1968 for a reported $114,000.

“Zombie Killers: Elephant’s Graveyard,” started shooting this month in Eldred Township. Another entry into the genre with the tagline: A small community may be the last outpost of humanity in the wake of a plague that may not be new to world history. Guarded by a small band of young warriors, life and death.

While written, directed and produced by former Pleasant Valley High School teacher, B. Harrison Smith, the idea for the movie was gestating in the mind of a local businessman for years.

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Zombie Film Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone Goes to Shoot

With Escape Plan, co-starring Sylvester Stallone, heading into cinemas in Novembers, and with Sabotage (nee Ten) and The Expendables 3 already lined up for 2014, Arnold Schwarzenegger has been a bit of a busy man.

Next year, he’s expected to take a sizeable role in the new Terminator movie, which is being directed by Alan Taylor for a 2015 release. But before that, there’s another project he’s sneaking in. The man himself has confirmed on his Twitter feed that shooting has now begun on Maggie, a movie in which he co-stars with Abigail Breslin.

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From Paranormal Activity to Zombies

EXCLUSIVE: Paramount Pictures has tapped Christopher Landon to direct  Scouts Vs. Zombies as his followup to Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, which the studio releases January 3. Landon wrote and directed that sequel after writing Paranormal Activity 3 and PA 4, and co-writing Paranormal 2. He will then take on Scouts Vs. Zombies. Landon will do a director’s pass on the Black List script by Carrie Evans and Emi Mochizuk, which was re-written by Lona Williams, whose draft attracted directors to the project.

Production begins in the spring. What’s it about? Think it through. The film is produced by Todd Garner and his Broken Road Productions, Andy Fickman and Betsy Sullenger of Oops Doughnuts, and Bryan Brucks and his Brucks Entertainment. Broken Road’s Sean Robins is exec producer. Langdon steps up to bigger budget fare after years of doing microbudget films at Paramount and working before that with Adam Goodman at DreamWorks on Disturbia. CAA and Mosaic rep Landon, who’s lawyered by Michael Schenkman.
 
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Take Part in Utah's Strategy Against Zombies

WEST HAVEN -- Twilight creeps toward night. The low rumble from the engine of an M1 Army truck is occasionally pierced by screams and revving chainsaws. A 7-year-old’s hand reaches for the butt of a gun.

A paintball gun, that is.

Haunted Hollow, at 1550 S. 1900 West in West Haven, has unleashed a new kind of terror in Utah this Halloween season, and it’s a killer … of the undead.

Haunted Hollow launched its new Zombie WarZ attraction last weekend. Zombie WarZ participants hunt zombies safari-style from the safety of a trailer turned two-story shooting gallery. Entrance onto the macabre thrill-ride comes included in your standard Haunted Hollow ticket price of $20. Zombie WarZ admission can also be purchased separately for $10 plus the cost of ammo.

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Here Comes the Zombies

MORAVIA — Humans at Honey Creek Resort State Park will have to keep a keen eye behind them on Saturday, Oct. 19, because zombies will be chasing after them.

Though there will hopefully be no real zombies walking the grounds, humans will face off against their pretend living-dead counterparts at the second annual Undeadathlon, taking place from 3:30 p.m. until around 8 p.m.

The living and the not so living will compete in games of capture the flag, a brain-eating contest and a 4K run that will test the speed and dodging ability of the humans. Participants will traverse several acres of the park, but zombies will only be allowed to run during the capture the flag game. Those wanting to be a part of the living dead team will have to keep their efforts to a walk for the 4K.

 

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Zombies Take Over

HAVE ZOMBIES OVERTAKEN Hollywood?

It seems that way, especially with television series “The Walking Dead” the toast of Tinseltown. How about the endless stream of undead movies – topped off with the tenderhearted “Warm Bodies,” a new twist of Shakespeare classic “Romeo and Juliet,” where a zombie gets a second chance at life with a kiss from a teenage girl.

Earlier this summer, megastar Brad Pitt and director Marc Forster (“Kite Runner” and “Quantum of Solace”) joined forces, entering the zombie fray with a new, epic blockbuster “World War Z.” It’s a loose adaptation of Max Brooks’ (son of filmmaker Mel Brooks) novel “World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War.” The film abandoned much of a journalist’s episodic journey during a post-Zombie Apocalypse, as he tries to a piece together how the pandemic began and how it spread.

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Zombies Still Top the List at Scare-A-Con

For every person dressed as a Ghostbuster, Dalek or steampunk enthusiast, there seem to be two, even three, zombies (or zombie fans) wandering around Scare-A-Con at Turning Stone Resort & Casino this weekend.

They turn heads, displaying their latex wounds proudly and posing for photos.

Scare-A-Con promoter JV Johnson has been organizing the horror and sci-fi convention since it began four years ago. He says the zombie fans are the craziest ones every year.
 
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Friday the 13th with Zombies

Runners will encounter rocks, tree stumps and the undead along the trails of McAllister Park at the Friday the 13th Night Race.

The 5K has a zombie theme and kicks off with a costume contest at 7 p.m. Friday.

Runners should bring a headlamp. The park is at 13102 Jones Maltsberger Road. Go towww.fridaythe13thnight race.com to register.

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Why Zombies Like to Eat Brains

Fandom is a funny thing. Often, if the fervor toward a given subject — or in our case genre — is strong enough, fans become advocates, and advocates can become crusaders. That is not meant as a slight — furious debates in which film fans engage is often a reflection of thoughtful theoretical analyses. Horror fans are not immune to fierce defenses of dogma; indeed they are arguably the most stalwart.

Take Warm Bodies. In the film, a zombie falls in love with the girlfriend of one of his victims, and slowly regains his humanity through their relationship. Zombie purists have been decrying the film from trailer one, citing it as an affront to canon.

The ugly, shambling, worm-ridden truth however is that there is no zombie canon anymore. The mythos has been rehashed and reinvented so many times that even the zombie model to which we steadfastly cling is a reconfiguration. Perhaps it would be best to look at the benchmarks in the evolution of this classic cinematic monster to illustrate that there has never been a solid rulebook.

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Tom Savini Plans to Direct a Zombie Film

Tom Savini is a very unique character in the horror genre and almost every die hard horror fan knows who he is. Today comes news he has tapped Tony Todd and Tiffany Shepis two fellow genre icons to star in his second directorial debut Death Island.

Having met Tom Savini I was quite shocked by his rugged nature and his straight to the point attitude but there is no denying that his special effects contributing to the genre and his work on Night of the Living Dead remake as director are second to none. So the thought of his returning to the directors seat is pretty damn exciting.

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Zombies, Bath Salts in Diaries

Zombies aren’t just an American phenomenon. Two young ladies, Alisse Lee Goldenberg and An Tran, have put together what they call “An epic Canadian zombie novel told entirely through diary entries.” That is their new book Bath Salts: A Zombie Novel.

And these two seem obsessed with Zombies, take a look at their facebook page and you see photos of World War Z author Max Brooks, Norman Reedus from The Walking Dead, zombie tattoos and links to George A Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead Live.

This is how An pitches the book to prospective readers:

Do you remember the drug, Bath Salts? That incident where the one guy ate the other guy’s face?

It was all a government conspiracy. The government made up the drug to cover up zombie outbreask. Two women realize what’s happening and flee to Nunavut to ride out the outbreak. But what starts happening, and what they don’t realize, is that they’re moving apart in two very different paths. One girl believes that to survive the zombie outbreak means you’re still human, but you have all your morals and ethics intact because that’s what makes you human. The other believes that surviving a zombie outbreak means you’re still a human… By any means necessary. Nothing is sacred.

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Zombie Baby is a Potential

“There are plenty of movies about killing zombies, but I’ve never seen one about taking care of a zombie.” Just like that, Andy Jones is on his way to Hollywood with his Zombie Baby.

Making it in Tinsel Town as a screenwriter is difficult. Books have been written on the subject touting the same formulas. Dozens attend lectures hoping to get a glimpse of the secret to success. People pay thousands of dollars for higher education degrees to learn the craft, but the truth of the matter is that it takes luck, talent, and non-stop hard work. Andy Jones, it seems, has found all of that with his new screenplay, the recently Black Listed Zombie Baby.

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Can Pets be Zombified, Too?

I’ve got to tell you, I am a little concerned.  Not only is there zombie preparedness kits and posters to download online but commercials are featuring zombies. They are all over the place, even in the “news.” Everyone is talking or writing about them may be all kidding but it got me thinking.  Should we be taking this more seriously AND what would happen to our pets?  Would they be zombified, too? Kidding or not.

After thinking about it for hours today, I think, if they were not protected, they would.  I think, all living things not destroyed or eaten, would morph into a “zombie” IF it were able to be infected with “zombie juice” or whatever it was that was causing the transformation.

“Zombie,” however, I think is just being used as a catch-all word.  I think it would encompass all human beings–or living things–during an large incidence for instance, that got very sick, couldn’t be treated and were still moving/infecting others.  I don’t think, necessarily, that it means the “zombie” image of the big screen. At least I sure hope not.

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War Can Lead to More Zombies

Zombie stories aren't going away, and our research suggests that more are coming. This chart shows the number of zombie movies that came out in the West each year since 1910. There are definite spikes during certain periods, which always seem to happen eerily close to historical events involving war or social upheaval.

Five years ago, we noticed that zombie movies seemed correlated with war. Everything from 28 Days Later to World War Z makes explicit reference to wartime. But is there really a connection between the popularity of zombie movies and social unrest? We decided to do some research and find out.

The result was the graph above (click here for a larger size), which does suggest that for some reason people crave zombie movies during times of war. And that means we may be in for a new round of zombie tales in coming years.

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'The Walking Dead' Zombies Get Turned into Online Course

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have gotten mixed reviews from academia, but maybe they’ll have an easier time winning over studios and fans of the undead.

Ahead of the new season of its hit TV show The Walking Dead, cable network AMC has partnered with education technology company Instructure and the University of California at Irvine for an online course based on the popular television series.

The eight-week course, titled “Society, Science, Survival: Lessons from AMC’s ‘The Walking Dead,’” will include content, video clips and examples from the show, as well as possible participation from the actors.

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Space and Zombies

Zombies. They're your ultimate nightmare. But the only thing that's more intense than regular zombies? Is space zombies. Because zombies are automatically way more terrifying when there's noplace to run. Here are the 10 greatest space zombies of all time!

 

Possible spoilers ahead...

We hadn't realized quite how many space zombies there are out there — especially if you throw in some edge cases like the Reavers. Zombies have been ruling the spaceways for decades, since Plan 9 From Outer Space and Astro Zombies (which is technically about a human space engineer who uses astronaut tech to turn Earthlings into zombies.)

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