Left: Action Flick Chick Katrina Hill. Right: Universal Dead's Doug Jones
Universal Dead turned out to be one of the highlights at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con International, where Paramount Pictures announced that it would be the first webseries to become a full-length major motion picture. Writer/producer Kelly Parks told me that he and director/producer Vernon Mortensen have been busy in pre-production for the 3-D feature version.
Description: Planet Earth is ravaged by a strange disease that turns people into mindless murderers. As civilization struggles to survive, a small team of US Navy SEALs must protect a doctor from the Center for Disease Control on a mission to evaluate the claims of an erratic scientist who may have discovered the secret to mankind’s salvation. Starring D. B. Sweeney, Gary Graham, Doug Jones.
As popular as zombie fiction has become, one of the great challenges for filmmakers is to come up with their own original twists and fresh stories. Survival horror is survival horror, after all. Right? Well, Universal Dead certainly has a twist or three. When I asked Parks if they’d chosen the title because Universal Dead = Un. Dead, he said it was “completely intentional!” The San Diego area setting makes one wonder: Will the zombie outbreak begin at Comic-Con in July?
