Gunn Talks Hopes for DAWN OF THE DEAD Remake

By Christopher Allan Smith (Cinescape)

In an exclusive interview with Cinescape magazine’s July issue, Scooby Doo scribe James Gunn had more than a few things to say about his hopes, and work, to bring a remake of George Romero’s classic zombie flick Dawn of the Dead to the big screen.

"Eric Newman called me up at Beacon [Pictures] and he said, ‘Do you like Dawn of the Dead?’" recalled Gunn for us. "I said, ‘Yeah, it’s one of my favorite all-time movies,’ and he said, ‘Well, I’ll buy the rights if you want to write it.’ It just hit me right there and I said ‘OK,’ because I can see it being a great film."

While Gunn is excited in revisiting a film from the trilogy (Dawn is part two, Night of the Living Dead is the original with Day of the Dead being the third and final flick), he’s also excited about infusing the remake with some fresh ideas, and avoid the pitfall he saw Gus Van Sant fall into with his Psycho remake.

"I took the central concept, which is people stuck in a mall during an apocalypse of flesh-eating corpses," he says. "Other than that, it’s a lot different. I think that the original Dawn of the Dead worked perfectly with the themes that it was working with, and there’s no reason to do the same movie in that way. So what I was really interested in doing was creating a small society. There’s more people in my mall."

June 11, 2002


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