Arts and Labor were at the event and did a comprehensive video recap.... check it out!
To get the 200 zombies without spoiling the surprise, we put out a casting call and said that we were shooting a movie called LET THEM EAT..... BRAINS. The response was enormous and as a thank you to all of the zombies, we created a special poster for them. This was an exclusive run solely for the zombie extras so there will probably be little chance of these showing up in the wild!
Misdirection was a key to this event. Our fans are VERY SMART, and we wanted to make sure that no one figured it out. So, for MMMIX, we threw a curveball and had everyone show up at a church 9 miles down the highway. We loaded everyone in charter buses, and they departed by motorcade escort to Highland Mall as soon as we got the cue that the mall was closed and all of their customers were off the premises. When the buses arrived at the mall...they were greeted by the walking dead.
We hired our good pal Meredith from Hawgfly to do the FX on the show and it turned out great. Her team cranked out over 200 zombies in just over 4 hours which is astonishing. The fans had to fight their way through the zombie horde and into the mall. They had help by a small band of gunmen, but as you can see, the zombies made quick work of them and some of the fans....
Upon entering the mall, we announced the film and introduced the secret guest, George Romero! After the standing ovation died down, he started to tell a story about the production of DAWN until one of the zombies made his way down from the upper concourse. Luckily, George was packing and easily took care of the problem....
I guess if he created them, he can kill them, too.
We ended the night by announcing the amazing Jeff Proctor poster which took him over 3 weeks to complete. Every zombie from the film is included on the piece and is 100% approved by DAWN OF THE DEAD and Richard P. Rubinstein himself.
We're very thankful for everyone's hard work on the project and hope that fans had fun. We're already working on the next Mystery Movie idea.... any guesses?
-Justin
