Weinsteins to open the Diary of the Dead

George A. Romero's super low budget zombie movie Diary of the Dead will get a theatrical U.S. release after all as The Weinsteins have picked up the rights to the distribution of the $2 million film beating out several other studio's for the movie. Other offers were said to have been 'straight to dvd' only with the Weinsteins clinching the deal likely because of their carrot being a theatrical release. Given their recent track record of releasing movies (with the exception of Halloween) this film is far from guaranteed to do well and the question of when is it going to open must be a prominent one. The best place for the film might be in the March/April horror season where movies like The Messengers actually made some money ($55 million worldwide) this year. Here's a snippet from a great review from AICN reader Tarantinoholic who has seen the movie at the Toronto International Film Festival. This movie sounds like a hit...

Artistically, the movie feels very fresh and full of energy, too, and you leave with the impression that Romero put his heart and soul into making this one. "Diary of the Dead" is fast and focused, a lean piece of filmmaking that runs like a well oiled machine and actually manages to be scary at some points, which I didn't think was really possible in a modern zombie movie. The majority of the audience loved the film and I think one of the biggest complaints from the crowd was that the movie was over too soon (it ran just over an hour and a half and could have gone on for at least a half an hour more if the powers that be wanted it to).

Didn't care much for Land of the Dead if I'm being honest but this movie sounds like Romero's put a lot of passion and effort into it, and to get a $2 million zombie movie shot in this style picked up for distrbution, should be commended.