The son of George A. Romero has been working on a project for some time to add his own film to the Romero zombie universe. That film has taken a step forward with its first piece of casting news. George C. Romero, who wrote the new Rise of the Living Dead, has announced that Dimitri Thivaios, of the Belgian DJ and record producing pair Dimitri Vegas and Like Mike, has been added to the film in an as yet unspecified role.
George C. Romero revealed the casting decision on Facebook. He says the main reason he's not ready to reveal the role that Dimitri Thivaios will be playing is that it appears in a part of the movie that the writer is not yet ready to discuss. Romero does say, however, that the role is one of his favorites in the script. It appears that the two are friends and that Romero was looking to find a place to put Thivaios in his movie.
It's a small step for the new movie, to be sure, a single casting announcement of a name that isn't going to be immediately recognizable to a lot of people, but then, Rise of the Living Dead isn't going to necessarily be a major Hollywood blockbuster, though there are major Hollywood players involved handling things like photography and make-up, so don't expect this to look like a low budget indie movie either. George C. Romero raised a significant amount of money for his pre-production on the film via crowdfunding, so the movie has a strong social media following. Fans are excited to hear about the first casting decision. We'll have to wait and see if more are coming soon.
As the title of the film implies, Rise of the Living Dead is a prequel story set before George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead. We don't know much beyond that at this point, the title was only officially revealed at Halloween. George C. Romero does claim that his father called his script genius, upon reading it at some point before the death of the elder Romero earlier this year. If nothing else, it's nice to know the new project got the seal of approval from the man who turned zombies into the popular movie monsters they are today.
Zombies have become a go-to creature choice for film, television, video games, and comics in recent years and we can pretty much all thank George A. Romero for that. He popularized the genre with the original Night of the Living Dead and he directed a half dozen total Living Dead films over the course of his career. While he made several other notable films, these will be the ones the Romero name will always be attached to. It seems that won't be changing with the son, who plans to carry on the legacy.
