subject: Resurrection & The Enduring Appeal of the Undead [print this page] Resurrection & The Enduring Appeal of the Undead
Everyone loves zombies. And it's rising. There is an enormous and established global fan-base demanding zombie product, which crosses an astonishing age demographic. And it's growing. Fast.
This is good news for Charmed Apocalypse Pictures writer / director combo Jake Hawkins and Andy Phelps, who are counting on this global fan-base to devour their Zombie feature Resurrection which begins production in July 2011.
So how do you gauge the popularity of the un-dead?
Looking at the latest zombie phenomenon The Walking Dead reveals some impressive statistics:
The first episode of American TV series The Walking Dead had the highest premiere in the history of AMC channels, and averaged 5.3 million viewers on a Sunday night. To put that into perspective, that's more than double the typical audience of Mad Men.
In the UK the same show was watched by over one million viewers on FX UK, ranking FX the highest rated pay TV channel in that slot.
The Walking Dead also proves that interest in zombies is one of the extraordinarily rare genres with a wide age demographic, rannging from 18 - 49.
In terms of feeding the machine, 2010 alone brought 68 zombie films, including the big-budget Crazies and Resident Evil: Afterlife, George A Romero's Survival of the Dead and a slew of low-budget splatter-fests.
But it's not just cinema that is infected by the zombies bite. Video game Dead Rising 2 sold over 720,000 units world-wide in the first 10 weeks of release and in a similar manner to The Walking Dead, new zombie game Dead Island's tear jerking teaser trailer focuses on the heart strings as much as it does on the gore, capturing the human element and dragging the viewer in on an emotional level. People want to connect with the human element; they want more from the dead. So what does this mean for Jake Hawkins and Andy Phelps' debut Resurrection?
Resurrection has all the genre tropes of infection through biting, death by head-shots and a group of people that are far more dangerous to each other than the horde is. But it offers more than a bunch of people just trying to survive. It has theme that most elusive of horror film content. The kind of theme that makes Romero's classic zombie movies stand above the rest: the critique on consumerism in Dawn of the Dead; the racism subtext of Night of the Living Dead; slavery in Day of the Dead; and the inevitability of a divide emerging between the rich and the poor in Land of the Dead. Resurrection addresses issues around belief, the battle between science and religion, and when is it logically justifiable to give yourself over to faith.
For more information on Jake Hawkins and Andy Phelps' feature Resurrection visit Charmed Apocalypse Pictures. Or follow the blog online at Shooting the Dead.
