Zack Snyder's Army of the Dead Has Easter Egg for Dawn of the Dead Remake

Though best known for his many comic book adaptations with DC, filmmaker Zack Snyder started his [...]

By Spencer Perry

Though best known for his many comic book adaptations with DC, filmmaker Zack Snyder started his feature film career with 2004's Dawn of the Dead remake. At the time the idea of remaking George A. Romero's 1978 classic was considered sacrilege but the film ended up a success and helped launch Snyder forward. He would dabble mostly in superheroes after that but he recently returned to the world of the undead with Netflix's Army of the Dead, a project that has been in development for over 10 years and which, despite a similar naming convention, isn't connected to the 2004 film. Or is it?

As noticed by @MoviesThatMaher on Twitter (H/T Bloody Disgusting), very quickly as Tig Notaro scrolls through some news on her phone ia headline that reads: "New information released about '04 zombie outbreak in Milwaukee." Fans of Snyder's 2004 remake will recall that the film was set in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, seemingly indicating that his first zombie movie is perhaps in the same continuity of Army of the Dead. Considering the larger implications of film rights, contracts and the like however this is mostly just an Easter egg and not confirmation that the two movies are directly related; but if you want to think of them as being in the same world, Snyder has offered you the opportunity to think that.

This is just one of several Easter eggs in Snyder's latest, though many of the others included in the film are seemingly seeds being planted for further exploration in the franchise.

"I had the idea from the beginning that these zombies were going to embody an evolution, the they were on their way to becoming something else, not stagnant like the zombies we're used to," Snyder previously said. "It was a way to make them fresh, while still delivering the zombie canon in some ways."

Ahead of the movie's debut Netflix and Snyder announced a prequel movie, which has already been shot, and an animated series that will further explore the world.

"I really wanted this sort of weird ambiguity to their origins — which, of course, we'll explore in the animated series, Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas," he continued. "And without giving away too much... If you pay close attention, there's a number of zombies that are clearly not zombies. You see normal zombies and then you see some robot zombies. Are they monitors that the government has placed among the zombies to monitor them? Are they technology from the other world? What's happening there?"

Army of the Dead is now streaming on Netflix.

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