THE DEAD TIMES
DEAD ARE COMING...
2020: Preview of the Dead: Part 3 - The Rest
The maggot filled corpse of 2019 is now almost completely gone; only a worn pile of bones remain in the barely marked grave, visited by only a few half-remembered souls, lost in the great forests of time. However, as what is left of that former year is reclaimed by the Earth, the animated automaton of 2020 grows increasing restless, positively fighting the crude shackles binding it to the examination table. With both the unbound wonders of games and movies already noted and catalogued, now we turn our attention to the very bones themselves, scraping at fibres to exhume the few remianing small nuggets of information that previously escaped our scrutinising eye.
One find, some small resurrected bacterium located within the living, lifeless husk has already been documented; a non-descript wanderer between the corpses of time. This miniscule, yet note-worthy, object is written about in a MIA appendix.
TV Shows
Narcos vs Zombies
A Mexican kingpin and his son escape from a high-security prison on the border between Mexico and America, taking refuge in a remote US drug rehabilitation facility. They may have found brief sanctuary from the humans that pursue them, but they have unwittingly stumbled into a failed military experiment housing thousands of deadly, mutant Zombies.
The Walking Dead season 10 concludes and season 11 begins
Early 2020 will see the concluding part of The Walking Dead season 10, currently on its mid-season break. What will happen? Obviously, The Whisperers will reappear and, following Negan’s escape from Alexandria and apparent induction into The Whisperers group, I doubt we have seen the end of that character. Will Michonne’s character die, confirming the rumours that the actress who plays her is leaving the show? All we know for sure is that our plucky bunch of survivors won’t be completely decimated as season 11 is already booked to happen later in the year. And this time, Maggie returns.
Fear The Walking Dead season 6
Coming as a surprise to absolutely no one, Fear The Walking Dead - spin-off to AMC's big-hitter The Walking Dead - is returning in 2020 for a sixth season. The show follows a much smaller group of survivors than The Walking Dead and focuses more on their struggles with the re-animated dead than their relationship with each other and the, oddly large, number of other survivors who are just trying to survive in the undead world they find themselves in - giving the show a more 'punchy' and upbeat feel than it's father series. It also seems more willing to take risks and experiment with outlandish themes - a welcome departure from its all-too-serious cousin. The only thing confirmed for season 6 is that Zoe Colletti (Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark) has joined the cast.
The Walking Dead: World Beyond
2020 also sees the launch the third spin-off show set in the Walking Dead universe. We do not actually know that much about The Walking Dead: World Beyond other than that it will focus on the first generation to grow up during the Zombie apocalypse and that the three main protagonists will all be female.
Kingdom season 2
The Korean Zombie TV show about a dreaded Zombie outbreak in feudal Korea is returning for it's second series in 2020. Season 2 will be a direct sequel to season 1, again following the young crown prince as he attempts to reclaim his country from the corrupt. The show garnered high praise during it's first run, holding an impressive 89 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes - the American review website for TV and film.
Black Summer season 2
Netflix has ordered a second season of Black Summer, the more-serious Zombie show from the makers of, now-cancelled, Z Nation. No details have made the journey across the world wide web thus far and with the first season being a kind of mixed bag in terms of whether people actually liked it, it may be worth keeping on eye on this one before boarding the hypetrain.
Resident Evil series
This one is a bit of an oddity. A TV show set in the Resident Evil franchise had been thrown about for a while but never came to anything - much to the annoyance of the fans. Then, in 2017, we got a glimpse of what could have been in Dave; a short YouTUBE video of what the show would have been like from the attached creator (ps. It was really, really good). From there, even though hype had be renewed for a full-length TV series, we heard nothing. However, 2019 saw the amazing release of the long-awaited, Resident Evil 2 remake. In a move that seemed to me as a purely tactical one to grab the heightened enthusiasm of Resident Evil fans the world over, out-of-the-blue, Netflix announced that, you guessed it, a Resident Evil TV series was in the works. The show is said to centre on the dark, inner workings of the Umbrella company (the evil company behind all the biological nastiness) and the new world order caused by the outbreak of the T-virus.
Miscellaneous
Dawn of the Dead 4K & blu-ray releases
Ok, so, this is a bit of a strange inclusion. Dawn of the Dead, the original 1978 classic by George Romero, is debatably the best Zombie movie ever made - at the very least, the most famous. However, due to some copyright issues and legal mumbo-jumbo that goes way over my head, the film can only be digitally streamed in the US and, in the UK, all blu-ray copies of the movie are out-of-print. Early in 2020, maybe February, this will no longer be the case as Second Sight Films is releasing 4K and Blu-ray versions of the masterpiece. The 4K discs will be Region Free.
Train to Busan VR
This one comes as a complete surprise to me but it seems the entertainment industry just cannot get enough of Korean Zombie film, Train to Busan. If a full-sequel and an English remake are not enough, Train to Busan is also to be adapted into Virtual Reality (VR). From the information I could uncover, it appears to be an event-based arcade experience, where you buy tickets to a purpose built 'stage', don a VR helmet of some description and go on a Zombie infested thrill ride. Contents Panda and Vividthree (the companies behind the project) have already started the show in Singapore and Malaysia but have stated that it may be expanded globally.
DCeased: Unkillables
The 6-issue comic book miniseries DCeased brought a Zombie plague into the DC universe of super-heroes and mega-villains. However, it very much focused around the heroes - Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, etc. - and how they coped (or did not cope) with a threat that could not simply be punched to death. Unkillables rewinds the action to see how the villains fair considering they do not have the shackling moral code of helping people and, you know, actually being heroes.
Night of the Living Dead Remix
The exact details of this play that is visiting various places in the UK in early 2020 remain annoyingly hidden. It seems to be a group of seven performers attempting to reproduce the entirety of George A. Romero’s original Zombie classic, Night of the Living Dead, live on stage with cameras, props and costumes. This seems to be an impossible task if true but Night was filmed on a impressively small budget, without any of the, far too common now-a-days, computer generated wizardry. Whatever the outcome, I'm sold already - anything that has "The Living Dead" in the title is an instant win in my book! Visit the official website for tour dates.
Castle Horror
The Masters of Scare will continue bringing the scares to Scotland in 2020
Castle Horror, the amazing, UK-based, producers of Zombie and other scare events of which I am a member, will almost certainly be putting on interactive shows again in 2020. No events are planned yet, though previous years have seen the action hot up around October, with Horrorween, The Maze and CarnEvil of Horror. Keep an eye on the Castle Horror facebook page for announcements.
The Dead Times
No surprises here - The Dead Times will be continuing to keep you up-to-date with all things undead in 2020. Reviews, articles, videos, pictures, zed-dates, news - they will all still be present and, rest in peace dear friends, I have some truly tasty parcels of information to exude.
MIA
The Living Dead
This massive novel was being worked on by 'Godfather of the Dead' himself, George A. Romero, for almost 10 years. Sadly, when he past away in July 2017, the epic tome remained unfinished and could not be released. Fortunately, Daniel Kraus (writer of funny horror movie Trollhunters and author of the novelisation of the oscar-winning film The Shape of Water) took up the challenge of completing this massive undertaking and, it's good news; he's done it! The 656-page book will be released June 9th, 2020.
DESCRIPTION:
Well into 2020 now, the Zombie projects of the year lie in wait, ready to strike. Most of these abominable specimens have been covered in parts 1 and 2 of this wretched preview of the dead. In this third (and final) part, the rest of the gloriously foul machinations are revealed.
CATEGORY:
Preview of the Dead
WRITTEN BY:
DATE UPLOADED:
19/01/2020