In more news out of the San Diego Comic-Con today comes word that producer Richard P. Rubinstein is converting George A. Romero’s original 1979 Dawn of the Dead into 3D! This news comes completely out of left field and is one of the last films that I would expect to get the 3D treatment.
Deadline is reporting, Richard P. Rubenstein, who produced Dawn of the Dead and owns the rights to Romero’s 1979 classic, says that he is in the homestretch of a 3D conversion of Romero’s groundbreaking followup to Night Of The Living Dead. Rubenstein started this crusade in 2007, and while he’s not sure what he will do with the refashioned film, he so far has one hour and 31 minutes converted of a two-hour, six-minute film. He expects the conversion to be done by early fall.
“It is proving to be more 3D-friendly than many films, because George’s style was to compose within the frame, rather than across frames,” Rubenstein said. “That means there is a lot of action within each frame, from front to back, and it makes the conversion process more friendly. It’s like you’re moving the audience closer to the movie. What I didn’t want to do is not edit anything George did in his original movie, and nothing has been altered in this process,” with the exception of a couple of technical credits of the conversion companies that became partners in this effort. They are the Korea-based Stereo Pictures Media Inc conversion house with backing from DNext Media. Converting the film has cost in the $6 million range, which is something considering the original cost around $685,000. How things have changed in the zombie pantheon, where Paramount spent around $215 million to get WWZ right before that film defied the doomsayers to become such a strong global hit. Rubenstein reminds that back when Dawn Of The Dead was released in April 1979, it was one of the first movies to get wide distribution without a rating. It opened in New York that April, and broadened until it got knocked out of theaters that wanted to play Ridley Scott’s Alien in June.
Rubenstein said the next step is figuring how to theatrically re-introduce the forerunner to zombie films to folks who weren’t born when Dawn Of The Dead came out. He is content to move as slow as a Romero zombie if necessary to do it right. “We want to get our partners’ money back, but since no financing came from distribution sources, we’re totally free,” he said. “It is getting the same kind of care, love and attention to detail that went into converting The Titanic,” Rubenstein said.
This might be interesting to see how it would fare in 3D. What do you guys think about it? Let me know in the comment section below!
