Earlier this week we shared a sneak peek at the upcoming book Screaming and Conjuring from author Clark Collis that put the spotlight on James Gunn’s horror comedy Slither, and we’re back with another Gunn-themed excerpt from the must-read horror book.
This particular exclusive excerpt is all about James Gunn and Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead, the 2004 remake of the George A. Romero masterpiece that Gunn scripted and Snyder directed. Yes, two filmmakers who would go on to bring very different depictions of Superman to the big screen got their start working together on a classic horror remake!
While Dawn of the Dead is fondly remembered as one of the best remakes from that particular period of time, the initial response to the project wasn’t exactly kind. In fact, James Gunn – who had previously written the Scooby-Doo movie at the time – even received death threats.
1984 Publishing will release Screaming and Conjuring: The Resurrection and Unstoppable Rise of the Modern Horror Movie, a definitive 504-page hardcover that pulls back the curtain on the horror film industry, on September 2, 2025. Pre-order the book now and read on for our exclusive excerpt below for more reflections on Gunn and Snyder’s Dawn remake.
‘Dawn of the Dead’ (2004)
After Resident Evil, House of the Dead, and 28 Days Later, the public’s renewed enthusiasm for zombies was further demonstrated in the spring of 2004 when Universal Pictures released Dawn of the Dead. A remake of George A. Romero’s 1979 movie, the new version was directed by first time filmmaker Zack Snyder and written by James Gunn.
Growing up in St. Louis, Missouri, Gunn had fallen in love with horror movies and, in particular, with Romero’s shopping mall terror tale. “I was a huge fan of Dawn of the Dead,” he recalled to St. Louis Magazine in 2011. “In fact, I had the poster for the original movie on my wall throughout high school.”
In the early ’90s, Gunn moved to New York to study creative writing at Columbia University. Needing a summer job, he approached Lloyd Kaufman at the New York-based, independent production company Troma Entertainment. Founded in 1974 by Kaufman and fellow Yale alumni Michael Herz, Troma specialized in low-budget horror like 1984’s The Toxic Avenger and 1986’s Class of Nuke ’Em High. Kaufman was looking for someone to write the script for his latest project, a comedic reworking of Romeo and Juliet called Tromeo & Juliet. Gunn took on the task for a payment of $150.
After Tromeo & Juliet, Gunn wrote a screenplay called The Specials, a comedy about superheroes. He gave a copy of the screenplay to his actor brother Sean, and Sean handed it to an acquaintance, Jamie Kennedy. The Scream star in turn recommended the script to a talent manager named Peter Safran, who helped get the project off the ground. The Specials was produced by House of the Dead co-writer Mark A. Altman. “It was tough, because the budget wasn’t a lot of money,” says Altman of the film’s production. “James came out of Troma, and so the budget never scared him. Rather than saying, ‘Why can’t we do something?’ [he said,] ‘What can we do with the resources we have?’” Directed by future The Last of Us TV show co-creator Craig Mazin and released in September 2000, the film was not a success. Still, The Specials put Gunn on the Hollywood map, and Warner Bros. president of production Lorenzo di Bonaventura hired him to write the script for a live-action version of the children’s cartoon Scooby-Doo. The 2002 film starred Sarah Michelle Gellar, Matthew Lillard, Linda Cardellini, and Freddie Prinze Jr. and grossed $275 million worldwide.
The idea to remake Dawn of the Dead came from a producer named Eric Newman, whose company Strike Entertainment had a first-look deal with Universal. Newman secured the rights to make a new version of Romero’s film from the director’s former producing partner Richard P. Rubenstein and asked Gunn if he was interested in writing the script. “I was being offered Jabberjaw, and Magilla Gorilla, and Hong Kong Phooey, and The Wonder Twins,” Gunn told IGN in 2006. “Those things really didn’t fucking interest me, so I was happy that Eric was willing to take a risk and let me do a horror movie.”
‘Dawn of the Dead’ (2004)
By the early 2000s, the original Dawn of the Dead was widely acknowledged to be a horror masterpiece. Any attempt to remake the film would likely have raised the hackles of horror fans, but the hiring of the man who had written Scooby-Doo to work on the screenplay provoked a furore on the internet. The online agita was fueled by an article Harry Knowles wrote for Ain’t It Cool News headlined, “When there is no more room in hell, James Gunn will write a remake of Dawn of the Dead!!!” Gunn later recalled that he received death threats after Knowles posted the article in August 2001.
The announcement that the film was to be directed by Zack Snyder would hardly have reassured Romero purists. The director had spent the ’90s making commercials for the likes of Audi and Nike alongside ZZ Top and Rod Stewart music videos. In the wake of 9/11, Budweiser entrusted him to direct their 2002 Super Bowl TV spot “Respect,” in which the brand’s famous Clydesdale horses bowed down in front of the New York skyline.
Snyder and Gunn kept Romero’s mall setting and, as a result, his critique of rampant commercialism. But the collaborators agreed to add an element to their Dawn of the Dead that would increase the project’s onscreen energy and the threat to the film’s living characters. Taking a leaf out of the 28 Days Later playbook, the pair decided that their zombies would have the ability to run.
Snyder assembled a cast which included Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Ty Burrell, and Wendigo actor Jake Weber. “Our goal was always to have goodactors. We didn’t want Carmen Electra in this,” producer Eric Newman told Fangoria, referring to the Baywatch actress’ appearance in Dimension’s Scary Movie. Snyder tipped his hat to the original movie by gifting cameo roles to Ken Foree, Scott Reiniger, and Tom Savini, all of whom had appeared in Romero’s version. The director shot much of the film at Toronto’s Thornhill Square shopping mall, part of which was set for demolition, during the summer of 2003.
The look of the film’s zombies was the responsibility of David LeRoy Anderson, who ran the Los Angeles-based makeup effects company AFXStudio with his wife, A Nightmare on Elm Street star Heather Langenkamp. The undead ghouls in Romero’s Dawn of the Dead had been physically set apart from the living by their blue-green skin. For the new version, Snyder requested that Anderson come up with a more visceral makeup design. “Zack’s prompt was: make it real,” recalls the makeup artist, who won Oscars for his work on 1996’s The Nutty Professor and 1997’s Men in Black. Anderson studied images of diseased and decomposing flesh in the hope of arriving at makeups that would satisfy the director. “I had to look at forensic information and comprehend the process of dying and decaying as a palette and a texture,” he says. “I wasn’t surrounding myself with historic zombie concepts, I was surrounding myself with these horrible images.”
The stunt people and extras playing the zombies were often running on camera, which, combined with the hot Toronto weather, meant that the performers looked increasingly grotesque. This development both surprised and delighted Anderson. “It was ninety degrees with a hundred percent humidity,” he remembers. “We utilized a technique that involved gelatin, and gelatin has a very low melting point. As soon as the performers started running, the gelatin started melting, and they became even better.”
Universal released Dawn of the Dead on March 19, 2004. The film faced strong competition from another violent tale of resurrection: The Passion of the Christ. Director Mel Gibson’s religious epic had come out in February and proved an unexpected commercial juggernaut, claiming the top spot at the box office for three weeks in a row. Ahead of his film’s release, Gunn noted that Dawn of the Dead at least had numbers on its side. “Well, you could see a movie with one guy rising from the dead, or you can see one with thousands,” the screenwriter told IGN. Dawn of the Dead earned $26 million at the domestic box office over its opening weekend, $7 million more than The Passion of the Christ. The movie ultimately grossed an impressive $59 million in the US and another $43 million around the world.
Fans of the film included Stephen King, who believed that the movie tapped into fears provoked by the 9/11 attacks and broader geopolitical issues. Snyder’s film began with Polley’s character going to bed on a normal day but waking up to see her husband being turned into a ravenous, violent zombie by a preteen neighbor. This prologue was capped off by a startling opening credits sequence that showed the collapse of civilization, soundtracked by Johnny Cash’s doom-laden “The Man Comes Around,” and began with a shot of Muslims at prayer. Ruminating positively about the film several years later in Fangoria, King had little doubt that the image was designed to echo real-life concerns. “It’s here that Snyder demonstrates exactly what this inspired remake is about, and how well he knew what was driving our fear-engines at that particular point in time,” the Carrie author wrote. “What we see in that brief black-and-white shot is what looks like a thousand devout Muslim worshippers, bowing to Mecca in unison—an image of mass belief that most Americans found troubling. By 2004, only three years downriver from 9/11, rampant consumerism was the last thing on our minds. What haunted our nightmares was the idea of suicide bombers driven by an unforgiving (and unthinking, most of us believed) ideology and religious fervor. You could beat ’em or burn ’em, but they’d just keep coming, the news reports assured us.”
Starting with 1996’s horror gamechanger Scream, Clark Collis “traces the blood-spattered path of horror’s evolution through exclusive behind-the-scenes accounts, untold stories, and in-depth interviews with key figures who shaped the era. For the first time, the full story of horror’s modern renaissance is revealed in one essential volume.”
Screaming and Conjuring will offer a deep dive into films like The Blair Witch Project, The Sixth Sense, Final Destination, The Others, Pan’s Labyrinth, 28 Days Later, Resident Evil, Saw, Hostel, Paranormal Activity, Insidious, and The Conjuring and their production history.
“For decades, horror was regarded as the film industry’s dirty secret, and now it’s one of the genres which is keeping Hollywood alive and cinemas open,” says author Clark Collis. “Screaming and Conjuring shows how a group of filmmakers turned horror into a box office juggernaut by creating some of the scariest movies ever unleashed onto the big screen.”
Screaming and Conjuring will publish in a limited first-edition deluxe hardcover, featuring black foil-gilded page edges, textured cover spot varnish, and heavyweight paper stock.
