"They just didn't like my script, man." According to zombie king George Romero, this is what his failure to make a Resident Evil movie comes down to. "The company that had it was a German outfit called Constantin Film," he says. "They'd bought the game but I don't think they knew what it was! The executive I worked with was a young guy who was turned on to it. But the head of the company just did not understand it, doesn't even know what a video game is. He wanted it to be something different. I mean, this is the guy who made Das Boot, so he wanted something prestigious. I told him that's not the spirit of the game. I did five or six drafts, but he just said, 'Forget it.' That was it."
Romero's story was set in a small town that is evacuated after the accidental spill of a top-secret, government-created biological weapon. As contaminated people start popping up as zombies, a crack paramilitary team is sent in to clean up the mess. They head for the source of the contamination, a Xanadu-like forest mansion that houses a government research station. But human ghouls aren't the only thing waiting for the team: In their descent into the bowels of the research station, they have to fight, shoot and slaughter their way through zombie dogs, sharks and snakes! The deeper they go, the more outrageous their adversaries become, including human/animal hybrid killing machines.
Romero says his Evil would have contained "a lot of action. i wanted it to be like the game and maybe visually like Day of the Dead, darker and confined. It's like a nightmare you can't get out of. You're in a corridor and you turn a corner or open a door and you're just in another small space. I was trying to stick with the game, and I worked with its designer. He gave us secrets from the second game, which had not been released yet. So some of the creatures and so forth came from that."
A number of other recent Romero projects have also failed to see the light of day. These include the big-screen adaptation of Stephen King's novel The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, the political thriller The Assassination and a vampire movie called The Ill. Romero wrote scripts for all three and, despite the projects currently being stuck in limbo, he says they are all "still alive," with him attached as director.
Another recent offer came from John Milius; even though it involved zombies, Romero was quick to pass on it. "It was a sequel to Return of the Living Dead," he reveals. "Actually, they wanted me to write a prequel to that series. I just said, 'Man, I'll pass.' I never spoke to John, though; I spoke to one of the producers at his company. They own the rights to that series." (A fourth Return-and a TV series!-are currently being developed by producer Tom Fox, with actor William Butler scripting the feature sequel.)
Nevertheless, Romero did unsuccessfully try to get the company interested in one of his own scripts; the long-awaited fourth installment of his own Dead franchise. "I finished the script just before the events of September 11," Romero says. "The story was about ignoring the problem, about people who are not stirred up by what's going on around them. They'll put a ring around the city and pretend everything is cool even though the rest of the world is a mess."
But given recent developments, Romero is contemplating making changes. "I don't know what's going to happen in the end, so I'm not sure if [the premise] is exactly right," he says. "But it's what people what to believe. That's the image they're selling. You see the commercials: 'Come to New York, everything's fine, don't worry about it.' But the question is: Is something else going to happen? I'm a little concerned that I will make a film that is not related to now. So maybe I'll have to change it a bit and make it about danger and the fear of what's going to happen next."
DVD producer Anchor Bay was ready to invest in the project, for a rumored $3-5 million share. "They're very interested," Romero confirms. "They've pledged a certain amount of money. I also have a Japanese group and a German group, and at the Torino Film Festival I saw Dario Argento again, who's very interested in getting involved. So maybe we can put it together with four or five sources. The script needs between $10-12 million, which is a pretty big bite for a small company."
Recently, it was announced that Scooby-Doo scribe James Gunn was scripting a remake of Dawn of the Dead, for which Beacon Communications acquired the rights from original Dawn producer Richard Rubinstein. The news puzzled many people, not least the director himself. "I just think it's ridiculous," he says determinedly. "But Richard owns the rights to Dawn, so I can't do anything."
Despite his recent streak of bad luck, the director is not one to throw in the towel. "Right now I'm writing a script for an old friend of mine, Mike Medoway," he reveals. "He was the president of Iron when we made Monkey Shines there. I'm writing a thing called Mannequin for his company. It's a straight-ahead horror story about a murderer. I think maybe this crosses the lines between what they want and what I want. So I have a pretty good feeling about it."
