Well Dawn of the Dead was made without Romero which led me to wonder who actually controls the rights to the franchise. Then I saw a little blurb at the bottom of the wikipedia post on the original movie saying that the distributor at the time failed to register a copyright under the Night of the Living Dead title after the film's title was changed from Night of the Flesheaters, so it became public domain. So I guess nobody can own the franchise.
^ That isn't entirely accurate. It is true that Night of the Living Dead was copywritten under the wrong name which, in turn, invalidated the copyright claims on that film (which is why you see a million copies of it at Wal*Mart on the $1 rack and why there will be clips of it used in an upcoming episode of Medium). However, the other films are copywritten and the rights are owned not by Romero but by the distributors of the films. This came back to haunt Romero as he cannot even claim rights to the characters anymore. For example he used dialogue from his version of Dawn and his version of Day in the trailer for Land of the Dead (Dawn: "No more room in hell"; Day: "All the Shopping Malls are closed.") and was immediately slapped with a lawsuit for infringement on the copyrights of those two films.
Another version of Night of the Living Dead? A few months ago, I finally saw the Tom Savini version (which at least had Romero's involvement), and it didn't interest me at all. And I hear the 3-D version with Sid Haig was terrible. I'm more interested in Romero's next zombie flick, but, then again, I was one of those few people who actually enjoyed Diary of the Dead.
Normally I'd trot out the "Shakespeare based his material on other works" argument, but you won't hear that from me here. Night of the Living Dead was made once. It was a classic. There's also an anniversary edition, which includes some newly shot scenes. It was poorly received. Then there's the 1990 remake, scripted by Romero and directed by his friend and frequent collaborator Tom Savini. I didn't find it as good as the original, although it had its moments (and certainly did better when Barbara was concerned than the original). Then there's the 3-D version that came out in the last few years. I haven't seen it. The reviews were not charitable. So now they're remaking it again in 3-D in CGI...what's the point? Are these remakes that profitable?
What the hell...? How many times is this gonna happen? All zombie movies are basically the same. Zombism breaks out; people fight back; everyone either becomes a zombie, permanently dies, or flees. The end. Not a lot of room for variation in that.
So when a movie is public domain does that mean every aspect of it is free for the taking? The script, dialogue, characters, everything is free to grab? I can understand that no one "owns" the final 1968 movie output itself but it seems like Romero would have still written it and I'm surprised that just anyone can consume it wholesale for another project. Is that the case or would the remake have to follow the exact plot and characters of the original?
Nope, they can do pretty much whatever they want to it and get away with it. For example (in 3D) The Cooper's own the House and are Farmers Tom and Judy are killed while having sex in the barn Ben is now white Mr. & Mrs. Cooper commit suicide The origins of the zombie plague are explains as being the results of experiments by a new character named Tovar.
I just had a great idea. Since the trend now is to make violent and stupid remakes of stuff like Star Trek, somebody should do a reboot of Night Of The Living Dead where the Zombies are all peaceful vegetarian Flower Children who sit around talking about peace and love.
Has any zombie film ever been done from the POV *of* the zombies? That might be interesting. And there is one novel that actually did something interesting with this whole thing: Wet Work by Philip Nutman. Spoiler: the novel In it, there are different 'stages' of being undead, if that makes any sense. Some zombies are of the standard slow shuffling Romero variety, but others actually retain their full intelligence and personality. In fact these smart, non-zombie undead actually take over the government!
^ That horror TV Series that NBC did a few years ago (I think it was called Fear Itself) had an episode told from the zombie's perspective. A girl wakes up on New Years Day and finds out that there's been a zombie outbreak in her hometown. She tries to get to her boyfriend and she finds out that she is a zombie (she killed herself after learning he'd been cheating on her).
I'm waiting for them to develop World War Z still! Ugh...this movie brings up the question what is the most remade film in history? There's gotta be one and hollywood will stop making remakes when we stop going to the theaters and paying money to see them. This doesn't interest me at all.
You'd probably have to break that up into categories such as "Spiritual Remakes" like Hard Target to The Most Dangerous Game or The Magnificent Seven to The Seven Samurai and remakes with the same title and characters. There's also confusion with say something like Romeo and Juliet which some people consider to be a new "adaptation" or "interpretation" rather than a remake.
Well, 'the Magnificent Seven' is a remake of 'Seven Samurai'. There's also an Italian remake, and the three sequels to 'the Magnificent Seven,' all of which are more or less the same movie. But, no doubt there has been something remade more times. How many times has the bible been used as source material, for example? Or works of Shakespeare?