Over 40 years have passed since George A. Romero unleashed his flesh craving zombies upon us, for the first time, in the cult classic Night of the Living Dead. And next year we’ll get to see it all over again, but this time in an animated version by the visual effects supervisor and first time director, Zebediah De Soto.
De Soto’s version, which he calls an American style anime, follows Romero’s original closely, with the same characters, Ben and Barbra, included. But it isn’t a rural Pennsylvania that has been invaded by bloodthirsty zombies, this time it all goes down in New York City.
Origins will also focus more on the character’s background and on all the hopes and dreams, which the zombie outbreak brutally shattered, than the original story.
Both Tony Todd and Bill Moseley will return to do their roles of Ben and Johnny, which they played in Tom Savini’s version from 1990. The voice of Barbra will be done by Danielle Harris, whom you might remember from Halloween 4 & 5, where she played young Jamie Lloyd, the niece of Michael Myers.
In the making of the movie, De Soto took advantage of the real-time effects system “The Beast,” which allowed him to shoot the animations as if he was shooting on a live set. It will be interesting to see if the use of this system will make us come closer to the story, by making the animations more vivid and alive, compared with other techniques, which I can feel to come off as static and undead, no pun intended.
Nevertheless, I feel that this project can be something pretty cool, with a fresh touch to it and I cannot wait until I get to see the first trailer, or what about you?
Below you can see a test rendering from the movie, as well as a still from Romero’s 68′ classic, for comparison.
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