It was around this period that a comic called Remains was introduced.
Written by Steve Niles and featuring illustrations caked with meat, gristle and irradiated pus by Kieron Dwyer, Remains gave readers a glimpse as a world unified by peace until, one day, someone presses the wrong button and the human race is practically annihilated. Focus shifts to Reno, Nevada where a casino blackjack dealer named Tom and a waitress named Tori attempt to get along with each other and deal with the evolving zombie horde.
Seven years after the first issue of Remains was released, Chiller TV is revisiting the story with a feature film adaptation airing on December 16. A perfect time for a release as zombies are in once again.
Directed by Colin Theys, the production stars Grant Bowler, Evalena Marie, Lance Reddick, Miko Hughes, Tawny Cyrpress, Terry Shappert, Frank Taveres and Bobby Rice.
Shock sat in on a conference call with Niles this week to discuss the adaptation.
Were you involved in the production beyond being responsible for the source material?
Steve Niles: They kept me very close to it. I guess the best way to call my role was I supervised a lot. They ran the script by me and and I did set visits. I was in constant contact with the folks at Chiller and Synthetic and they kept me involved at every stage of approving makeup and, like I said, the script. These guys really knew what they were doing and I felt perfectly comfortable being on the West Coast while they were working on it [in Connecticut].
What do you look for when youre approached by someone who wants to turn a graphic novel of yours into a movie or a series?
Niles: Honestly, enthusiasm. Enthusiasm for the material means more to me than a big option.
Niles: I think horror always reflects our general fears and anxieties in society. Right now, without getting too serious, right now were actually afraid of other people. Were afraid of disease, were afraid of being invaded by people who look kind of like us, so the way we express those fears are through what better than this mindless zombie hoard that wants to eat us. Theyre our friends and neighbors who want to kill us and eat us. I think zombies are a very, very basic way for us to confront those fears too, because the reality of it, its the real world stuff is so horrifying and zombies are a great way for us to sort of work through those fears, and thats just something I feel about horror in general. I always feel like its a relief and we use it to illustrate what were afraid of, and then shoot it in the head.
How is Paradise Lost coming along?
Niles: Im writing a script that Im pretty sure Im going to have to go into protective custody of when the artist reads it, because if youve ever read Paradise Lost there isnt…once the war starts everything is in the millions. So, for the first time in my life Im writing a comic book and Im literally going like, I am so sorry, but a million angels come swirling down. Im really having a lot of fun with it. Im working from Alex Proyas script – not the poem. If I was working from the poem I would not sound nearly as chipper. Alex Proyas wrote this incredible script and thats what Im adapting. And he really figured out a way to strip it down to the basic story where youre dealing with the story of Lucifer and his relationship to the Archangels and how the whole division started. Im really having fun. Michael Kaluta is doing the art, so if he doesnt kill me its going to be a beautiful book.
How does it feel to have the first original movie on Chiller?
Niles: This is really exciting for me because I really like TV movies. I grew up with TV movies. Dan Curtis, a hero of mine, he did the Night Stalker shows and Dark Shadows, and I mean he was behind so much of these great things and he used to do all these great TV movies. Richard Matheson used to write tons of ABC Movies of the Week during the ’70s and theyre pretty much exactly this kind of stuff. They were Richard Matheson short stories turned into movies for TV, so I just have a really special affection. I remember when they called I could tell there was…everybody was sort of apologetic, “Do you want to do a TV movie?” And I was thrilled with it. I started talking to them about these TV movies and got them in the spirit of it.
Niles: Thats a big thing I wanted to bring up because The Walking Dead is so popular and thats the current version of what people think you know zombies are. When I sat down to write Remains, it was the time when Walking Dead was just starting to get strong as a comic. Land of the Dead was out. There was a zombie surge building. And when I sat down to do Remains I wanted to do something different, and I wanted to do something that was a little bit bigger than the do they run or do they shamble? For that, it seemed it like I had to come up with something that could put the audience and the characters on edge, because lets face it, now especially, everybody knows how to deal with zombies. You board up in the house and you wait it out. You shoot them as they come to you. But, in Remains that doesnt necessarily work because of the event that creates these zombies theres actually two different kinds. One of them was slightly more advanced and theyre eating the others and theyre evolving. In Remains, you can never sit back in your boarded up house and be comfortable because the zombies will sooner or later figure out how to either climb in or pull the boards off, so I had a lot of fun with that. I had a lot of fun playing with zombie conventions, because theres not just the Walking Dead zombies, theres the George Romero zombies, the Fulci zombies, theres the Return of the Living Dead zombies, theres the remake of Dawn of the Dead zombies, and I really tried to kind of have fun with all of them. It’s just a pet peeve of mine with any genre movie is it bugs me when anything is all the same. Like when there’s a Star Trek planet where everybody has blonde bowl cuts. Im like, How did that happen? So I figure in a world where zombies are created, and especially in Remains, is because of the human accident that there would be variations of the disease based on the proximity to what happened.
Niles: In a comic book, you have no budget. I can do anything I want. If I want 10,000 bikers coming out of the horizon I can do that. The artist will be mad at me, but you know its not a budget issue. The first thing we had to do was go through the comic and there were a few set pieces that would have just been impossible. For people who read the comic, there is a biker scene in there that it just would have cost too much money because it literally is hundreds and hundreds of bikers approaching through the desert not realizing that theyre about to hit an entire system of wires and they all get sliced like deli sandwiches as they ride into the city. The budget to shoot that was just way over the top, so we had to come up with other ways to do it. Im really happy with Synthetic Cinema because the budget was a TV movie budget. I am absolutely shocked at how much of the comic actually got on film. I dont want to give too much away, but theres a scene involving a circus prop for a sort of Cirque du Soleil-type casino, I assumed that that would just be cut because its so over the top and so silly, and they found a way to do it.
Was there any stand-out moment during your visit to the set?
How much involvement did you have in casting?
Niles: That was them. Grant and Evalena just read the comic, understood their characters, and did it. And I was so pleased because, Tom and Tori arent the most flattering characters. Toms not the brightest bulb, and you know Tori is not the nicest girl, and I love flawed characters who hate each other. I thought they played it so well and there are some moments where Grant…hes not stupid. Like I said, hes just a little dim, so I love his reaction when people like his ideas. I was really glad that they embraced that because I tell you, thats the kind of thing that would be – if that was a Hollywood production, Tom and Tori would become a perfect people. Theyd become perfect people with slight problems, as opposed to playing them like real people who are a little flawed. I honestly couldnt be happier because what youre seeing there is what the director did and what the actors did on their own, reading the script and reading the comic and understanding their characters.
