Before that, zombies were sorcerers’ slaves in Haitian Vodou folklore, but Romero imported them to contemporary America. But the game’s creators − and the creators of every subsequent zombie project − owe a debt of gratitude to George A Romero, the writer-director of a low-budget black-and-white shocker, Night Of The Living Dead, in 1968. Simon Pegg, the star and co-writer of Shaun Of The Dead, traces the zombie revival back to the release of Resident Evil, a video game that terrified and transfixed PlayStation users in 1996, and which has been spawning sequels (as well as film spin-offs) ever since. 2013, it seems, is the year of the zombie. If that weren’t enough, a more thoughtful French take on the risen dead, Les Revenants, was shown on British television this summer as The Returned, and became the first fully-subtitled drama to be broadcast on Channel 4 in over 20 years. This month, the TV show’s fourth season commenced, and its opening episode was watched by 16.11m viewers − five million more than the equivalent episode the season before. A comic-book series with the same grisly antagonists, The Walking Dead, was launched in 2003, and was adapted into a television series in 2010. Instead, it went on to rake in $540m, making it one of 2013’s ten biggest blockbusters.Īnd zombie fever hasn’t been confined to cinemas. Surely there was nothing new to be said about the undead? That tardiness, along with reports of the film’s troubled production, suggested that World War Z would die a death at the box office. Since then, the films have kept lurching onto the silver screen, from 28 Weeks Later (2007) to Zombieland (2009) to Cockneys vs Zombies (2012).īy the time Brad Pitt’s World War Z was released in June, it seemed it was several years late to the party. Two years later saw the release of both a frenetic zombie action movie, Dawn Of The Dead, and a ground-breaking zombie romantic comedy (or zom-rom-com), Shaun Of The Dead both critical and commercial smashes. In Danny Boyle’s 2002 hit 28 Days Later the mindless cannibals weren’t called zombies − they were simply ‘the infected’ − but they were close enough to remind the film industry that there was money to be made from the dormant horror sub-genre. It’s now more than a decade since zombies began their relentless shuffle into the mainstream of popular culture. It’s a truism that applies to zombies − everyone’s favourite decomposing, man-eating fiends − but it’s also true of the zombie films, television series, books and graphic novels that are being devoured by ever greater audiences, long after the fad for this particular breed of undead monster seemed to be heading for the grave. Just when you think they’re finished, they get up again and shamble towards you.

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