George A. Romero's unrealized projects
During a career that spanned several decades, the American film director George A. Romero worked on a number of projects which never progressed beyond pre-production under him.
In the mid-1960s, Romero initially planned to make his directorial debut with Whine of the Fawn, a Bergman-esque tale that follows the travails of two 15th-century travelers in the Middle Ages.
[11] In January 1980, it was reported that Romero was planning a big studio film to be shot in Pittsburgh later in October that year called Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Moon, from a script by Rudolph J.
The film went through numerous different iterations before it fell apart, and Romero went on to attempt an actual War of the Worlds remake instead, which got stuck in development hell.
[15][17] In the early 1980s, Romero worked on Mayday, a screenplay written by Paul Larsen based on the book by Thomas Block and Nelson DeMille, which was one of several projects that were proposed as possible follow-ups to Creepshow.
[19] However, during the 1988 Writers Guild of America strike, studios expressed renewed interest in Pet Sematary and the rights were acquired by Paramount Pictures.
[20] Romero was attached to film an adaptation of the Henry James 1898 horror novella The Turn of the Screw for Columbia Pictures, but the project was shelved after David Puttnam left the company in 1987.
[27] Romero worked with screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen on a script and consulted with special effects teams for the project, which was planned to be a ten-hour miniseries that would air over the course of five nights.
[26] However, executives at ABC were concerned that Romero would make the project too gruesome for network television, and the length of the miniseries was decreased to only four hours over the course of two nights.
[33][34] In October 1992, New Line Cinema acquired the rights to Whitley Strieber's horror-suspense novel Unholy Fire for Romero-Grunwald Productions, with Romero set to direct under the company's first-look deal.
[35] In June 1993, it was reported in Daily Variety that New Line Cinema had acquired the rights to the upcoming supernatural action novel The Black Mariah for Romero to direct through a first-look deal.
[37] In 2021, the library system discovered a screenplay that had been written by Romero that was an adaptation of Welcome to Dead House, the first book in the Goosebumps series by author R. L. Stine, which was published in 1992.
[40] Romero was one of several filmmakers who expressed interest in adapting Goosebumps during the height of its popularity in the 1990s, and Tim Burton was at one point attached to a project but abandoned it to work on Superman Lives.
[2][31][33] In August 1997, it was reported in Daily Variety that Romero was attached to direct Chain Letter, which was in development at Joe Wizan and Don Schneider's Phase 1 Productions.
[46] The commercial impressed executives at Sony Pictures who contacted Romero to direct a live action film adaptation of Resident Evil.
[46] Romero wrote a draft within 6 weeks that was largely faithful to the plot of the first game, focusing on the characters Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine and set in Spencer Mansion.
"[46] The British filmmaker Paul W. S. Anderson directed a 2002 film adaptation of Resident Evil with a plot that differed substantially from the first game and Romero's script.
[51] In 1998, Romero wrote a screenplay based on the 1800s Tennessee legend titled The Bell Witch, which was a project he had worked on for decades in different iterations.
[1][31] In April 1999, it was reported that Trimark Pictures were reviving an old script written by the Wachowskis called Carnivore, and that they were negotiating with Romero to direct, with production slated to begin in August.
[55][56] In 2004, Romero was preparing to direct a zombie-themed musical called Diamond Dead,[5] due to star Asia Argento as a Goth named Aria DeWinter who accidentally kills her favorite rock band and strikes a deal with Death to resurrect them.
[57][30] Set to feature music by Richard Hartley and with Ridley Scott attached to produce, Diamond Dead had several high-profile names circling it, including Johnny Depp and David Bowie, but was ultimately viewed as too risky by the financiers involved.
[60] In 2006, Romero wrote several treatments for a proposed television series called, alternately Zombisodes and Zomboid, which was a cartoonish parody on zombie movies in which the "hapless undead protagonist is slashed, shot, blown up, crushed, run over, and otherwise punished over and over again.
"[6] In 2006, The Hollywood Reporter announced Romero would write and direct a film based on a short story by Koji Suzuki, author of Ring and Dark Water, called Solitary Isle.
[61][5] In 2009, around the time of the release of Survival of the Dead, Romero told Movies.com that he was considering a potential sequel with a "noir flavor," or a jungle adventure with people traveling down the Amazon River.
"There's a scientist there doing genetic experiments, trying to make the zombies stop eating us, and he has discovered that with a little tampering, they can recall certain memory skills that enable them to drive in these races.
He penned a film treatment with co-writer Paolo Zelati depicting a conclusion to the series that explains the fate of the zombie protagonists from Land of the Dead and an ending where humanity has become virtually extinct.
It was announced in April 2021 that the film had been put back into development under the supervision of Suzanne Romero, with Zelati finishing the script with screenwriters Joe Knetter and Robert L. Lucas.
