George Romero’s The Living Dead Novel Pushed Back to August

Over the course of his career, George Romero proved himself to be a seminal creator in the world of horror, with his creativity being so immense that many of his projects are seeing their release in the years following his passing, though fans will have to wait a few more months for his The Living Dead novel, which is now slated to hit shelves in August. Sadly, Romero himself never finished the book, with author Daniel Kraus stepping in to complete the concept, with the nature of its narrative allowing zombie threats to be explored throughout all corners of the globe.

As pointed out by Bloody Disgusting, rather than the book hitting shelves on June 9th, it now has a release date of August 4th.

The book is described, “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.”

Many consider Romero to be the godfather of the zombie genre, thanks to his accomplishments with 1968’s Night of the Living Dead. The filmmaker went on to revisit that world with his sequels Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, and Land of the Dead, while also crafting new zombie universes with Diary of the Dead and Survival of the Dead. When it comes to the “rules” of zombies, Romero’s ghouls set the standard for the subgenre.

While some Romero fans might be disappointed that The Living Dead is a book instead of a film, utilizing this medium means that the story wouldn’t be hindered by any production budget, or lack there of.

“What’s exciting about the novel, though, is how it goes the opposite direction,” Kraus previously shared with Entertainment Weekly. “It’s huge. It’s a massively scaled story, a real epic, the kind no one ever gave him the budget for in film. In a book, of course, there is no budget, and in his pages you can feel his joy of being able, at last, to do every single thing he wanted.”

You can grab a copy of The Living Dead when it hits shelves on August 4th.

Are you looking forward to grabbing a copy of the book?

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