Zombies to race apocalyptic cars in George Romero’s 'Road of the Dead' movie

Even if you’re not a horror fan, you’ve probably heard of director George A. Romero before. Some of his films include the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead. It is blatantly obvious that Romero has built a strong cult following by creating zombie apocalypse classics. And this year, another movie by the legendary director will hit cinemas near you. It doesn’t come as a surprise then that the movie’s cast will still consist of zombies, but this time, it isn’t like any of the other zombie movies out there. In fact, even Romero himself finds his latest film a little odd.

To enlighten you guys, the movie is entitled George A. Romero Presents: Road of the Dead. The movie is set on a private island, post zombie apocalypse, and zombie prisoners are forced to race post-apocalyptic vehicles in a modern day Roman coliseum to keep the elite entertained.

The script, co-written by Romero and Matt Birman, was pitched about a decade ago. If you are not aware, Birman is known for his movies like The Expanse, American Psycho, and the X-Men series. Birman himself said that this film can be described as Road Warrior meets Rollerball at a NASCAR race, with significant inspiration taken from Ben-Hur, and some of Romero’s films of course. So now, you can probably imagine why this film is quite out of the norm.

Last year, Romero actually bowed out of the zombie game after saying that the genre is dead - due to the over-saturation of movies and shows like The Walking Dead and World War Z. But he might have been enticed by Birman’s 10-year-old script. That’s how he came about with his latest film stuffing zombies into race cars. In fact, the plot may remind you of some Marvel films including Battleworld and Ghost Racers, or DC’s Wacky Raceland.

Online, you could see come renderings of a post-apocalyptic Lamborghini Reventon that we might expect to see in the movie. Rendered by artist Vishal Patil, the vehicle comes complete with a bull bar, caged windows, and a gatling gun attached to the roof. Looks like the zombies will really have to be forced in those caged vehicles, and its seems like the races are going to be bloody.

The director has not shared plenty of details about the movie yet in terms of cast, vehicles, and characters as of now. But we anticipate that most of the information will be given to us next month before the movie premieres at Montreal’s Fantasia International Film Festival this July.