Breck Eisner To Remake The Crazies George A. Romero's apocalyptic thriller Source: Variety
Life must be particularly bittersweet for George A. Romero at the moment.
While the director – a true legend of horror and one of the nicest guys you could ever wish to meet – is slaving away up in Canada on another micro-budget movie, Overture Films has given the green light to yet another remake of one of the great man’s films, presumably backed by a budget that Romero can only dream about these days.
The film in question is his 1973 flick, The Crazies, in which a virus that causes its victims to become homicidally insane spreads through a small town. A companion piece of sorts to Night Of The Living Dead, The Crazies isn’t exactly a horror film, but a thriller that had plenty to say about the inadequacies of government, the army and the baser elements of human nature.
Its central plot – in which a small group of survivors try to escape from the town, which is overrun by the infected and trigger-happy, incompetent soldiers – has been echoed since in countless movies, most recently Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem (no, seriously), and offers plenty of scope for a modern take.
Breck Eisner – who called the shots on the breezy, if insubstantial, Sahara – will direct the remake, from a script Ray Wright and Scott Kosar. Romero has bagged an executive producer credit, although we’re not sure how involved he will be.
Ordinarily, we’d be heaping great dollops of cynicism upon this project, but if we learned anything from Zack Snyder’s Dawn Of The Dead – apart from the fact that we’d all be utterly shafted if zombies could run – it’s that you write off a Romero remake at your peril. And we say that hoping that nobody has seen Steve Miner’s Day Of The Dead retread, which instantly undermines our argument.
Production on The Crazies, which had previously been set up at Rogue Pictures, will begin next year.
28 Days later
Nightmare city
Poor romero, i genuinly feel sorry for him, his original films are inventive, classic and inspired low budget classics, but you know something, i have never really noticed the low budgets in his films due to the strength of the writing. all of the zombie films after Night are a hollow pastiche of romeros original, bleak but brilliant trilogy. The crazies to me is romeros testing the water for an even bigger film, obviously the bigger film was the Bombastic, and bri... Read More
the original was a very cheap, hit and miss affair. The premise is a good one and could be fleshed out nicely. The originals pandemic elements, the military's disregard for those affected, "containment" and "extermination" being top of the agenda have all been dealt with in Romero's own Zombie trilogy, the 28 days/weeks later. However, there was a touch of English horror novellist, James Herbert's "The Fog" that could be exploited. The latest reminder of widespread... Read More
The Crazies was never that great in the first place so I'm intrigued to see what they'll do. I doubt it'll be as good as Snyder's Dawn but it's worth a try. ... Read More
The Crazies is truely a product of its time, cheap, gritty, bleak and brilliant. 21st century gloss is going to seriously undermine the seedy charm of Romero's original, and bearing in mind how many viral-menace movies have already been inspiried by the 1973 version, a modern take has little to offer. Still, I thought the same thing about Dawn of the Dead, and Snyder's version has proven to be THE ONLY remake of a '70s horror movie worth a damn. Absolutely love Romero, but (and it pains me to sa... Read More
