Sam Raimi brings Zombie Roadkillto the web What do you get when you take one of the
biggest directors in Hollywood, add an Oscar-nom- inated actor and introduce some aspiring filmmak- ers with a penchant for dead animals? Easy: Zombie Roadkill, a new web series from Sam Raimi’s Ghosthouse Pictures, featuring Thomas Haden Church and some taxidermied forest crea- tures. “It’s basically about a group of kids who are on
their way to the lake in the middle of summer and they run over a squirrel and the squirrel comes back to life and attacks everyone in the car,” ex- plains director David Green. “Then it’s up to the youngest person in the group, Simon, to save his older brother and his older brother’s friends. There’s a lot of adventures and it’s kind of a com- ing-of-age story. He’s going up and down this road, battling zombie animals that he sees around every corner.” The six-episode series (slated to premiere Octo-
ber 4 on
FEARnet.com) was written by Henry Gay- den. Green and Gayden met while working as production assistants on Spider-Man 3, and when production on that film wrapped, Raimi, knowing their cinematic aspirations, asked them to put to- gether a short film. The filmmakers bought a taxi- dermied squirrel on eBay and made a short about roadkill that comes back from the dead to exact revenge. With the help of Raimi’s long-time busi- ness partner Rob Tapert, and several producers, Roadkill was developed as a four- to five-minute episodic series for FEARnet. “He let us have a tremendous amount of free-
dom to play around and really helped us hone a lot of the scares,” says Green of Raimi’s guidance. “He really makes you slow down and concentrate on how each little beat is going to happen. All those little notes help so much.” Raimi’s involvement also helped attract the in-
terest of Church, who met Green and Gayden on set when he played The Sandman in Spider-Man 3. The actor, who appeared in Tales from the Crypt:
Zombie Roadkill: Thomas Hayden Church (right) as besieged ranger Chet Masterson.
Demon Knight and was Oscar nominated for his supporting role in Sideways, plays ranger Chet Masterson in Zombie Roadkill. “In the midst of this roadkill bloody coup in this
forest, he’s sort of this avenging angel,” explains Church. “He’s a park ranger with this lethal sort of spirit to him.” The actor adds that he was drawn to the project
because of its tone. “I thought it was funny and it had the Raimian
sort-of branding of camp horror. I love Drag Me to Hell, Army of Darkness and Evil Dead. It has those sensibilities.” The splatter comedy laughs are courtesy of the
array of undead animals, including a squirrel that treats eyes like acorns. “I wanted to give all of them life and character,”
says Green, “and give them each distinct traits, like, ‘Oh, this one has a torn rib cage, and this one is missing an eye, and this one, half of its face looks normal but the other half is totally wrecked
and zombified, so let’s make it a two-faced pup- pet.’” Quantum Creation FX, which has worked on
such projects as House of the Devil, The Box and The Watchmen, came onboard to turn the taxider- mied parts – sourced from eBay by Green and co- producer Ryan Hendricks – into zombie animal puppets. “Anything that you can imagine in a forest is
represented,” assures Church. “Wait, let me re- phrase that – anything that could be run over with a car is represented in this movie. You cannot run over a bear, so there are no zombie bears; you can’t run over a moose, so there’s no zombie moose. But going down the food chain from there, pretty much everything is represented: deer, ’pos- sum, skunk, raccoon, squirrel. I don’t think there are any zombie mice; they may have overlooked that particular species, but everything else is in there.”
DAVE ALEXANDER
RM8 D R E A D L I N E S
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128