Dead Friends Forever a Feature!

Dead Friends Forever: A Feature

After a two-day shoot in Mingo Junction, Ohio, that saw nearly 100 locals come out and volunteer to be zombies in their hometown, Grimm Sleeper Productions has announced that the short film, Dead Friends Forever, will instead be made into a feature film.

"It began as a short as a fun little project to show off the special effects talent of More Gore Effects, and to tell a fun and unique story set in a zombie apocalypse," said Josh Maley, the film's writer/director. "But little by little, it kept getting bigger. We landed a pair of zombie royalty with Jeanie Jefferies and Mike Ancas. Heck, we cast the Jack Links sasquatch! And we were fortunate to also get some familiar names and faces like David Ogredowski, Xander Goldman, Dave Dietz. And when Mayor Judy Ruckman of Mingo Junction agreed to let us film in her town, it really upped the scale. I rewrote the back end of the script to take advantage of the amazing locations out there. Suddenly we're on the news and in the papers and we have this massive zombie herd. It's organically grown to be much a much bigger film than we set out to make."

While the potential of the story to expand into a feature had been informally discussed, it was completing the assembly edit of the film that really sealed the transition. "The assembly edit of the scenes thus far as about 23 minutes, and we have a few more things to film. I estimate the final version of that would have been about thirty minutes which, as was pointed out to me, is very long for a 'short' film. It would be a tougher sell at fests. But adding another half an hour...that's doable. We have such interesting characters in the film; the history between our lead roles of Ren and James Cormac is just begging to be fleshed out. Ren's search for her sister that drives her in the film is also fertile ground. Not to mention her fall from grace with the GHG (Global Health Group) and a bit more background on this mandate that everyone be given a monitoring device 'for the greater good.' Lots of potential to explore here."

What this means for the timing of the film is unknown, but feature films tend to have more options for festivals and more potential for post-festival life on streaming platforms or some other form of distribution. Stay tuned for more here on the official site!