Before Army of the Dead, there was Dawn of the Dead
In 2004, Zack Snyder teamed up with James Gunn to try and remake George Romero’s classic zombie-flick.
According to James Gunn, in the early 2000s, Eric Newman called him to ask whether or not he would write a Dawn of the Dead remake, for the producer might be able to secure the rights to the movie. Gunn tells us he had refused a lot of screenplays Newman wanted him to write before this, plus he thought Dawn of the Dead was sort of perfect, but then he thought about it. REALLY thought about it, for he had the poster of the Romero movie in his uni bedroom and he answered yes, on the condition he wouldn’t have to pitch anything. For Gunn, like many writers, dislike pitching to execs.
Other sources state Newman had already secured the right by this time, but would it really matter? What really matters is James Gunn, future director of the Guardian of the Galaxy, got free rein so as to write a new Dawn of the Dead movie. In his mind, there was no use trying to attain the cult status the original possessed, hence why instead of a critic on consumerism, Gunn decided to put characters in a difficult position, because the end of the world is a difficult situation, and see how they would evolve. This hands-free approach gave us a great script, which had nonetheless to be reworked by two — including Scott Frank who actually wrote the scene where a character reveals he is gay, not James Gunn despite what Curio says in their video on Snyder’s work.
What’s interesting is, since the script was credited to James Gunn only, he was the sole recipient of death threats for trying to remake a “cult classic”. See, at the time, James Gunn was only the writer of some Troma flicks and of Scooby-Doo 1 & 2. Plus, Ain’t it cool News, a pretty famous movie sort of targeted the remake at the time, a fact rendered worse by Roger Avary trying to replace James, something the Guardians of the Galaxy director would not take kindly.
In a recent Q&A, Newman said the first director attached to the project had three movies under his belt, but three movies that sucked. Was it Avary he was talking about? Or someone else entirely? We may never know. What we do know is that, at the time, Zack Snyder suddenly quit the production of his very first feature film which was to be Sony’s S.W.A.T. Despite it being his first foray into theaters — for Snyder was a director/director of photography in music videos and advertisement before this — Snyder really wanted the movie to not be rated PG-13. This lack of violence, plus the preparation of an action film may have played a part in Snyder’s decision to make his zombies run.
Since neither Gunn nor Snyder wanted to redo Romero’s film, everyone started to work in the direction of an action-packed horror movie which could not be compared to the 70s cult classic.
It should be noted that James Gunn went on record stating that the way Zack Snyder worked — doing his own storyboard plus preparing everything meticulously- really influence Gunn in his future directing career.
What the making of would teach you, is that first the production had to find a mall. There was one in Romania, one in New Zealand, one in L.A and one in Toronto. The Canadian shopping center got chosen after location scouting with the production designer. pretty ironic when you know the first thing they did was destroy the entire interiors and rebuild everything. One problem was that no brand wanted to be associated with the movie, a fact Newman and Snyder discuss at length in the DVD commentary, so they had to invent fake brands.
As for the casting, it’s funny to note Ving Rhymes got onboard all by himself for he wanted to do a horror film “in which the black man survives the day.” Sarah Polley got cast instantly for her love of zombies while Ty Burell and Jake Weber both casted for the opposite role. Some say Kevin Zegers and Lindy Booth might have been casted both for their horror past and for being Canadian.
As for the zombies, the production hired Mr X, a Canadian SFX company, who created a tent village solely used to turn extras into zombies. According to the lead make-up, there were almost always 200 extras present on set, with them being sorted out by the quality of their make-up. On a busy day, the make-up crew would actually have to let some extras with no make-up go on set, only to spray them in-between rehearsals with fake blood.
In the commentary, Snyder is eager to point out that his make-up team all did a fantastic job, what with their team going as high as 30 artists rotating on a single day. Yet Newman always points out that it was Zack’s preparation which helped the production be on schedule when it was almost impossible. When crossing those statements with those or James Gunn, or the knowledge that the production of Dawn of the Dead had to suffer through the famous Toronto black out of 2003, it’s amazing the team was able to pull everything off without running late.
Sure, in order to do so, they had to cut on James Gunn’s idea of a bunch of trained dogs getting attacked but CGI dogs, but hey, a director’s gotta do what a director’s gotta do.
Still, reminiscing on Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead, it’s amazing to think the movie got hated so much before it was even released only to then be revered for at least a decade. Some say the success was thanks to them not trying to emulate Romero’s movie and some said it was because the movie was a genuine love letter. Still, this might point to Twitter not being the problem and people having taken their love for movies too seriously for the longest time. Still it grossed 100 million dollars on a budget of 26.
What’s interesting is that, at the time, Snyder was already working on 300, plus he already wanted to direct a zombie heist movie. A small movie named Army of the Dead in which a father would try to save his daughter from a zombie-infested Las Vegas.
Oh, and this version would have had rapey zombies. So maybe this 18 years hiatus wasn’t such a bad thing.
Next week will be fiction week and my new piece will be called Cropsey!
