George A. Romero’s epic zombie novel The Living Dead will be published in 2020. Romero ed away in 2017 at the age of 77 and left a profound legacy on the horror genre. He practically Night Of The Living Dead, where a group of survivors board themselves in an isolated farmhouse and are quickly besieged by waves of the undead. The movie’s stark documentary style, black & white photography and shocking ending made it an instant classic, though a mistake while copyrighting the movie tragically meant neither Romero nor his partners made any profit from the movie's success.

Romero’s follow-up zombie movies Creepshow and The Dark Half. Prior to his ing, he was working on a novel called The Living Dead, which jumps between three different time periods and perspectives. The filmmaker had previously written novelizations of Dawn Of The Dead and Martin and wanted to tell a zombie story that wasn’t confined by a low budget.

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Romero tinkered with The Living Dead for over a decade before ing away, with writer Daniel Kraus later brought on to finish the book. Now Kraus has confirmed via his Twitter that his work is finished and the book has been submitted. Tor Books will publish the novel in June 2020.

Romero preferred his creative freedom over working with a studio, so he often made movies with lower budgets. His original script for Gone With The Wind of zombie scripts, but when he couldn’t raise the finances needed due to the extreme violence of the story, he trimmed it down. According to Kraus, the manuscript for The Living Dead was in good shape by the time he started work on it, and he mainly needed to flesh out sections towards the end of the book.

The Living Dead won’t be the only Copperhead in the early 1980s, which fell apart over financing.

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Source: Daniel Kraus