Return of The Living Dead (film Series) - History

History

The series came about as a dispute between John A. Russo and George A. Romero over how to handle sequels to their 1968 film, Night of the Living Dead. The two reached a settlement wherein Romero's sequels would be referred to as the Dead movies, and Russo's sequels would bear the suffix Living Dead. Thus, each man was able to do what he pleased with the series, while still having one another's work distinct and be considered canon. Following this decision, Russo wrote a horror novel, Return of the Living Dead (novel), which he planned on adapting into a film script. Although the film rights were initially sold in 1979, they were passed along by several different studios and directors before finally being obtained by Tobe Hooper, for whom Russo wrote a script. Hooper dropped out of the project, though, and the script never came to fruition.

Following Hooper's departure from the project, Russo, along with his new partner, Dan O'Bannon, wrote a new script (with Russo adapting it into an accompanying novel), also entitled The Return of the Living Dead. This project alleviated confusion amongst fans of Romero's work by including a scene in which a character acknowledges the George Romero films and explains that while they are based on true events, the events of the Return series are the "true story". In addition to this separation of the storylines, the films in the Return series are markedly more comedic than Romero's films, with slapstick humor.

Although Russo and O'Bannon were only directly involved with the first film in the series, the rest of the films, to varying degrees, stick to their outline and "rules" established in the first film.

The fourth and fifth films in the series were filmed simultaneously near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant station in Ukraine. Despite being intended for a theatrical release, edited versions of both films made their debut on the SciFi Channel on October 15, 2005 and were later released on DVD.

A documentary about The Return of the Living Dead, The Return of the Living Dead Part II and The Return of the Living Dead 3 entitled More Brains! A Return to the Living Dead Retrospective was released on October 18, 2011.