George Romero’s Novel ‘The Living Dead’ is Coming in 2020
When George Romero passed away in 2017, he left a huge catalogue of scripts, a 1973 film that only a handful of people have seen, and an unfinished novel titled The Living Dead. Step up author Daniel Kraus, who was hired to finish the novel, and he has done just that!
I have turned in THE LIVING DEAD, the massive zombie epic I co-wrote with George Romero. While writing, I wore George’s scarf, a gift from his wife. ☠️💚 (June 2020 from @torbooks) pic.twitter.com/QySG1deNVS
— Daniel Kraus (@DanielDKraus) February 19, 2019
Kraus reports that he has finished the novel and that it’s being released in June 2020, which is a huge wait for any Night of the Living Dead fan excited to see Romero’s world expanded onto the printed page. The official synopsis of The Living Dead reads…
“On October 24th, John Doe rises from the dead. Assistant Medical Examiner Luis Acocella and his assistant Charlene Rutkowksi are vivisecting him when it happens, and so begins a global nightmare beyond comprehension.”
“Greer Morgan is a teenager living in a trailer park, and when the dead begin their assault, the true natures of her neighbors are revealed. Chuck Chaplin is a pretty-boy cable-news anchor, and the plague brings sudden purpose to his empty life.”
“Karl Nishimura is the helmsman of the U.S.S. Vindicator, a nuclear submarine, and he battles against a complete zombie takeover of his city upon the sea. And meanwhile, a mysterious woman named Etta Hoffmann records the progress of the epidemic from a bunker in D.C., as well as the broken dreams and stubborn hopes of a nation not ready to give up.”
“Spread across three separate time periods and combining Romero’s biting social commentary with Kraus’s gift for the beautiful and grotesque, the book rockets forward as the zombie plague explodes, endures and finally, in a shocking final act, begins to radically change.”
It does sound like Romero could have been heavily influenced by World War Z, that deals with multiple people from around the world, talking about their experiences with the zombie apocalypse. We’ll find out when the novel is released in 2020.