Dawn of the Dead (2004 film)

Dawn of the Dead is a 2004 action horror film directed by Zack Snyder in his feature directorial debut, with a screenplay by James Gunn. A remake of George A. Romero's 1978 film of the same name, it stars an ensemble cast that includes Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Jake Weber, and Mekhi Phifer, with Scott Reiniger, Tom Savini, and Ken Foree from the original film appearing in cameos. Set in Milwaukee, the film follows a group of survivors who try to survive a zombie apocalypse holed up in a suburban shopping mall.

Producers Eric Newman and Marc Abraham developed the film rather as a "re-envisioning" of the original Dawn of the Dead, aiming to reinvigorate the zombie genre for modern audiences. They bought the rights from co-producer Richard P. Rubinstein (who produced the original) and hired Gunn to write the script, which oriented the original's premise around the action genre. Intent on making the remake a straight horror, Snyder took over to direct with the goal of keeping every aspect of the production as grounded in reality as possible. Filming took place from June to September 2003, on location at a Toronto shopping mall that was slated for demolition. The special makeup effects were created by David LeRoy Anderson, and the music was composed by Tyler Bates in his first collaboration with Snyder.

Dawn of the Dead was theatrically released on March 19, 2004, by Universal Pictures. Despite Romero's distaste for it, the film earned generally positive reviews from critics, who saw improvements over the original in terms of acting, production values, and scares. However they felt it lacked character development, was excessively gory and also indifferent to Romero's preoccupation with consumerism. Dawn of the Dead was a commercial success, grossing $102.3 million worldwide on a $26 million budget. Retrospective reviews have called it Snyder's best film. A spiritual successor, Army of the Dead, was released in 2021.

Plot
After finishing a long shift as a nurse in the Milwaukee area, Ana returns to her suburban neighborhood and her husband, Luis. Caught up in a scheduled date night, they unintentionally ignore an emergency news bulletin. The next morning, a zombified neighborhood girl, Vivian, enters their bedroom and kills Luis, who immediately reanimates and attacks Ana. She flees in her car, crashes, and passes out. Upon awakening, Ana joins police sergeant Kenneth Hall, electronics salesman Michael, petty criminal Andre and his pregnant wife, Luda. They break into a nearby mall and are attacked by a zombified security guard, who scratches Luda. Three living guards — C.J., Bart, and Terry — force them to surrender their weapons in exchange for refuge. They split into groups to secure the mall. On the roof, they see another survivor, Andy, who is stranded in his gun store across the zombie-infested parking lot. The group notices a military helicopter flying overhead and attempts to get the pilot's attention, but to no avail.

The next day, a delivery truck carrying more survivors enters the lot, pursued by zombies. C.J. and Bart wish to turn them away but are overruled and disarmed. The newcomers include Norma, Steve, Tucker, Monica, Glen, Frank and his daughter, Nicole. Another woman is too ill to walk; she is wheeled inside via wheelbarrow, only to die and reanimate. After she is killed, the group determines the disease is passed by bites. Andre leaves to see Luda, who has kept her scratch hidden from the group. They realize that Frank has been bitten and is a potential threat. After some debate, Frank elects to be isolated. When he dies and turns, Kenneth shoots him.

Kenneth and Andy start a friendship by way of messages written on a whiteboard; romance also buds between Ana and Michael, and Nicole and Terry. When the power goes out, C.J., Bart, Michael and Kenneth go to the parking garage to activate the emergency generator; they find a friendly dog named Chips, and worry about a breach. Zombies attack and kill Bart, forcing the others to douse the zombies in gas and set them ablaze. Meanwhile, Luda — tied up by Andre — gives birth and dies. She reanimates as Norma checks on the couple. When Norma kills the zombified Luda, Andre snaps; they exchange gunfire and both are killed. The others arrive to find a zombie infant, which they kill immediately. The group decides to fight their way to the local marina and travel on Steve's yacht to an island on Lake Michigan. They reinforce two shuttle buses from the parking garage for their escape.

To rescue Andy, the group straps supplies onto Chips's body and lower him into the parking lot; the zombies have no interest in him. Chips enters Andy's store safely, but a zombie follows through the dog door. Nicole, fond of Chips, crashes the delivery truck into the gun store, where a now zombified Andy traps her. Kenneth, Michael, Tucker, Terry, and C.J. reach the gun store via the sewers, kill Andy, and rescue Nicole. They grab ammunition and go back to the mall; along the way, Tucker breaks his legs, and C.J. shoots him out of mercy. Once inside, they are unable to lock the door, forcing an evacuation via the buses.

While navigating through the city, Glen loses control of a chainsaw, accidentally killing himself and Monica; blood splatters on the windshield, causing their bus to crash. Steve leaves the group and is killed by a stowaway zombie. While C.J., Kenneth, and Terry look for survivors, Ana kills the zombified Steve and retrieves his boat keys. At the marina, C.J. sacrifices himself so the others can escape. Michael reveals a bite wound, killing himself as Ana, Kenneth, Nicole, Terry, and Chips flee on the yacht. Footage from a camcorder found on the boat shows Steve's escapades before the outbreak and concludes as the group runs out of supplies, approaches an island, and is attacked by a swarm of zombies before the camcorder drops.

Cast
Additional members of the cast include stuntman Ermes Blarasin as the bloated woman, Natalie Brown as a CDC reporter, and dog actor Blu as Nicole's adopted pet dog Chips. Director Zack Snyder cameos as a soldier battling zombies at the United States Capitol during the film's title sequence, as do Scott Reiniger, Tom Savini, and Ken Foree (who were in the original film) as a general, sheriff, and televangelist, respectively.

Development
Plans to remake 1978's Dawn of the Dead were conceived by producer Eric Newman, a fan of zombie films who cited the George A. Romero horror film as the best in this genre. With the remake, Newman and producer Marc Abraham wanted to reinvigorate the zombie genre for modern audiences as well as "make the old fans happy and make a lot of new fans". Newman and Abraham bought the rights to Dawn of the Dead from its producer and rights holder Richard P. Rubinstein, who was reluctant at first as he was "concerned that somewhere along the way a studio would sanitize Newman's vision for producing a version with 'attitude'", but that it was "Marc Abraham's long track record in keeping the creative integrity of the studio distributed films he has produced intact that gave me reason to say 'yes'". Newman hired James Gunn to write the script, and the studio brought Gunn in despite not wanting to deliver them a signal idea for the film beforehand. A fan of the original Dawn of the Dead since he was a young boy, Gunn explained that he took the job because he "kind of saw generally what it could be".

The producers conceptualized the remake as more of a "re-envisioning" which would work in some references to the original but would primarily work on its own terms. Co-producer Eric Newman cited Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), The Thing (1982), and The Fly (1986) as influences on the remake, considering these to be "amazing updates" as well as "great movies that add to rather than diminish the original films". By way of respect to Romero's film, the producers cast the original's Tom Savini, Scott Reiniger, and Ken Foree in cameos; and incorporated visual references to Gaylen Ross and James A. Baffico.

In writing the script, Gunn took an action-oriented approach while remaining faithful to the basic premise of Romero's version. To develop the plot, he declined to write a treatment in favor of a discovery writing method whereby he would devise hypothetical situations which would ultimately force the characters to evacuate the mall. Gunn decided to leave the origin of the zombie outbreak ambiguous, believing this would give not only equal consideration to each audience's viewpoint (scientific or otherwise) but also something to think about what they would do if they found themselves in a similar situation. The script was given uncredited rewrites by Michael Tolkin and Scott Frank; co-producer Richard P. Rubinstein said Tolkin further developed the characters while Frank provided some of the bigger, upbeat action scenes. Gunn revealed he received internet backlash over the film due to his past screenwriting credit on Scooby-Doo (2002), believing him to be unqualified for the job. However, film critic Harry Knowles, initially an opponent of the remake, read Gunn's script and gave it a positive response on his website Ain't It Cool News, which Gunn said helped eliminate doubts cast upon him by fans of the original.

Theme
With Dawn of the Dead, Gunn wanted to explore the human condition as well as tell a wholly different story about redemption. He elaborated on the redemptive theme of the film in an interview with IGN during a press junket for Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed released that same year:

"[...] Dawn of the Dead is about redemption because it's about a bunch of people who have lived certain lives, who have maybe not been the best people, and suddenly they have everything that they've used to define themselves: Their careers, their churches, their jobs, their families are stripped away. They're gone. They start at nothing and they have to become who they really are in the face of all that and some of the people are redeemed and end up becoming good people and some of them are not redeemed and they end up, you know, not redeemed. And that's what kind of drove me throughout the story, was it was a story about redemption. I also think that there's a lot about how people survive and what people turn to in the face of such tragedy. The tragedy in this case being flesh-eating zombies. And really it's a group coming together to work as a community who wouldn't otherwise work together. So there is that foundation of love, that basic message, within even Dawn of the Dead..."

Pre-production
Zack Snyder chose to direct the remake as his first feature film because it gave the television commercial director "a reason to care about every shot". Not wanting his version inevitably compared to George A. Romero's, he concurred with the producers on reimagining the latter film as opposed to doing it as a "remake", which, in his view, would have entailed re-shooting Romero's script. For that matter, he aimed to make his film a straight horror that was "as serious as a heart attack" and keep every aspect of its production as grounded in reality as possible. His approach included previsualizing the film with storyboards and introducing the concept of running zombies, which he said was his "fresh, new way" of giving it a sense of verisimilitude and rendering zombies as if they were real threats, especially when they attack in hordes. Snyder maintained Gunn's decision not to reveal the origin of the zombie outbreak, believing it was "obvious that in this fallen society, you wouldn't know where the whole plague started".

Set design
In searching for a suitable upscale mall location for the film, production designer Andrew Neskoromny looked for existing malls that were scheduled for demolition. His search yielded no results until he found the now-defunct Thornhill Square shopping mall in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, which measured approximately 45,000 sqft. Dubbed the "Crossroads Mall", the crew completely redid the mall over an eight-week period, adding an expensive water feature near the entrance, 14 stores, parking structures, and warehouse areas. Since Snyder wanted the stores palpable in terms of design and stood not merely as storefronts, Neskoromny's team accordingly built them as actual retail stores complete with merchandise. These stores were given fake names, since only two major retail brands agreed to be featured in the film.

Makeup and practical effects
The special makeup effects for the film were created by David LeRoy Anderson, with assistance from his actress wife Heather Langenkamp. Prior to accepting the job from Universal Studios' then-executive James D. Brubaker, Anderson had been in a two-year hiatus from working as a makeup effects artist to operate his company DLA Silverwear. Anderson completed his test makeups for the film over a four-week period, and then he and his team traveled to the Toronto set and set up their makeup effects lab next to the mall.

To depict a heightened realistic look to the zombies, Anderson researched on the appearance of decay following human death, looking through several medical books, war footages, and crime scene photographs showing graphic images of trauma victims; he broke down the look of decomposition into three stages:

"The first stage looks like someone who was just in the ER – pale, with lots of fresh blood. The second stage has moist wounds but the skin is beginning to break down. There is a lot of discoloration and mottling, mostly blues and greens. The third stage is the most intense, with the skeletal form coming through. The wounds are dried-up, the skin is sloughing off and colors are oily blacks."

Head hits were done practically through various methods, such as bullet hit squibs covered with prosthetic scalps and attached to the back of the actor's head to be detonated. Concerned about the risk thereof, Anderson developed an alternative method in which his team would attach wires to the scalps loaded with blood packs and yank them with a remote-controlled "air ratchet system", lending a similar gruesome effect as with the squibs sans potential harm.

Principal photography
Filming began on June 9, 2003, on location in various parts of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Hundreds of zombie extras had to be constantly available for the entire shoot. To handle the volume of willing extras, Anderson and his team built a large "factory" where painted extras would stay put until they are spoken for by either the main or second unit film crew. They built various makeup rooms for the artists to work in: one consisted of camper trailers where they would apply detailed prosthetic makeups to extras playing "hero zombies", a special type of zombie; and the other consisted of tents where they would produce painted masks for extras playing background zombies. Extras playing foreground zombies were painted with plain palette makeups in Anderson's mall lab. The makeup artists were given his concept images to work on as references. According to Anderson and Heather Langenkamp, the most extras they ever had in a given day sat between 200 and 400, with a total of 3,000 makeups completed when filming ended on September 6, 2003.

Visual effects and title sequence
The visual effects for the film were provided by Canadian VFX studio Mr. X Inc., with its president Dennis Berardi serving as the film's co-VFX supervisor.

The production shot scenes for which Snyder wanted as many as 4,000 live-action zombies, which Berardi created rather as a combination of practical zombies and CG zombies which he built as 3D models with Autodesk Maya. One such scene involved tens of thousands of zombies at the mall's parking lot, which was shot with motion-control passes whose green screen elements of 200 extras, combined with the CG zombies, were later composited to create a "digital crowd simulation that looks realistic".

Kyle Cooper designed the title sequence for the film, using real human blood.

Film score
The score for Dawn of the Dead was composed by Tyler Bates, his first for a horror film. Bates became involved with the film after he was recommended to it by its music supervisor, G. Marq Roswell, who learned he made little money from his work on Mario Van Peebles's film Baadasssss! (2003), on which Roswell also served as music supervisor. The studio was not convinced with hiring Bates because they felt he was not an established composer at the time, but director Zack Snyder insisted on him, and he was ultimately hired.

In scoring the film, Bates avoided taking cues from the original's music by the band Goblin, finding its style to be incompatible with what Snyder had filmed. Bates's score combines elements of electronic music and 20th-century orchestra, which was influenced by the works of composers adept at creating dissonance, such as Béla Bartók and Krzysztof Penderecki. Bates employed these musical choices with the intention of making the audience "very, very uncomfortable".

Milan Records released Bates's score in physical format for the first time on October 23, 2012, a week after the record label released it digitally via iTunes Store and Amazon Music. The album comprises 31 tracks, all of which were composed by Bates. Dawn of the Dead also marks the first of several collaborations between him and Snyder: he would later compose for the director on 300 (2006), Watchmen (2009), and Sucker Punch (2011).

Other songs
In a 2023 interview with Total Film, Snyder revealed he had lobbied for the inclusion of the Richard Cheese cover of "Down with the Sickness", originally sung by the heavy metal band Disturbed, which plays in a montage where the characters relieve boredom in the mall. According to Snyder, the studio originally declined the Richard Cheese version in favor of the Disturbed version, but he managed to convince them that the former was appropriate for the scene. Snyder also stated his rationale behind the decision to play "People Who Died" by The Jim Carroll Band at the end of the film: "I really love that [opening chords of 'People Who Died'] DANG! DANG! DANG, DANG, DANG! I thought that it was cool as a way to end the movie because it's so dark. It's a bleak ending, in a cool way."

Box office
Dawn of the Dead was marketed with its 10-minute opening sequence that was broadcast on cable television four nights prior to its theatrical release. Entertainment Weekly projected that it would outperform The Passion of the Christ in its United States opening weekend, with an audience base comprising largely young males and estimated gross of $22 million.

In the U.S. and Canada, the film was released alongside Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Taking Lives, on March 19, 2004. Dawn of the Dead ended up performing above projections, debuting to $27.3 million in its U.S. opening weekend and claiming the top spot The Passion of the Christ held for three consecutive weekends. Variety reported, "Some 63% of Dawn [audiences] were under age 25, with 57% of patrons male. Hispanic moviegoers comprised 21% of its supporters and African-Americans 14%." Dawn of the Dead ended its theatrical run as a commercial success, grossing $102 million worldwide on a $26 million budget; it grossed $59 million in the United States and Canada and $43.3 million in other territories.

The release of Dawn of the Dead in the U.S. nearly coincided with that of Shaun of the Dead, another zombie film distributed by Universal Pictures. In a February 2004 Variety report, a spokesman at Universal revealed that the studio had greenlit Shaun of the Dead "with the condition that Dawn of the Dead would be released here in the U.S. first" in order to avoid this conflict.

Dawn of the Dead was screened out of competition at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.

Home media
Universal Pictures Home Entertainment released Dawn of the Dead on DVD, Blu-ray, and digital with director Zack Snyder's unrated director's cut of the film: he described this version as longer, gorier, and more character-driven than the theatrical one. Bonus features found on the DVD and Blu-ray include Snyder and co-producer Eric Newman's audio commentary; the featurettes Attack of the Living Dead, Raising the Dead, Drawing the Dead, Splitting Headaches, Surviving the Dawn, and Special Report: Zombie Invasion; the short film The Lost Tape: Andy's Terrifying Last Days Revealed; deleted scenes with optional commentary by Snyder and Newman; and the film's theatrical trailer.

On Halloween of 2017, Shout! Factory's horror sub-label Scream Factory released a two-disc collector's edition Blu-ray of Dawn of the Dead, which contains the film's theatrical version and the director's cut. The Blu-ray, which is said to have been "derived from the digital intermediate archival negative", contains bonus features found in previous releases in addition to new and exclusive ones featuring interviews with actors Ty Burrell and Jake Weber, screenwriter James Gunn, and makeup effects artists David LeRoy Anderson and Heather Langenkamp. A 4K Ultra HD collector's edition Blu-ray from Scream Factory with extras ported over from the label's previous release was released on January 31, 2023.

Theatrical
Dawn of the Dead garnered generally positive reviews upon its release, with critics praising it as a worthy remake of the original and a fine addition to the zombie genre. The film was considered by most to be an improvement over the original in terms of acting, production values, and scares,  but Variety and Derek Malcolm felt that it was only intermittently scary. Despite giving it a negative review, Variety said that the film was otherwise "more palatable" than the "atrocious" Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake released the previous year. Michael Gingold stated, "[...] Dawn of the Dead joins The Ring and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as an update that both honors its source and emerges as an effective horror film in its own right," a sentiment also shared by IGN. Lisa Schwarzbaum praised Snyder's direction in a "killer feature debut", and Roger Ebert said in a positive review that anyone paying to see it is guaranteed to get their money's worth.

Abundant praise was given to the film's opening sequence, which an otherwise negative review from The Hollywood Reporter called "pulse-poundingly good". Gingold found Snyder's camerawork utilizing a first-person video-game perspective at the beginning of the film to be praiseworthy, more so than those of the video game films Resident Evil and House of the Dead. The lack of dark humor of the original was a subject of criticism, although the scene in which survivors shoot zombified celebrity look-alikes with a sniper rifle was considered by most to be funny, among other jokes;   The Hollywood Reporter cited it as some of the film's "moments of inspired audacity". Many noted that the "fast zombies" of Dawn of the Dead were similar to those of 28 Days Later, but felt that the Danny Boyle film was "darker and creepier", "smarter, more rigorously structured", and could pass for a remake of the original.

Despite the general praise, some critics said the film gave scant consideration to George A. Romero's satirical critique of consumerism, among other sociocultural issues. Ebert and Variety argued that whereas Romero used the zombie-infested shopping mall to stage a metaphor about consumer society, Snyder used it merely as a convenient shelter for his characters. Gingold lamented that unlike Romero's film, Snyder's provided no social commentary on racism through its black characters Kenneth and Andre as well as the interracial relationship between Andre and Luda. In contrast, Manohla Dargis opined that Romero's consumerist metaphor has lost its significance in the years since the original's release, "with the politics of consumption now an established academic field and shopping now considered a statement of identity". IGN praised the film's tonal departure from Romero's, calling it a "calculated risk that paid off".

The Hollywood Reporter and Chicago Tribune complained that Dawn of the Dead was content to indulge in bloody zombie killings devoid of meaning and introspection once present in the original, leaving the audience rather numbed and "less mercifully handled, even at the end-credits". Wesley Morris gave a negative review in which he said the film "feels like the product of the PlayStation era" than a reverence for Romero. Elvis Mitchell had similar objections, writing that "[t]he flesh-eaters are picked off like video-game targets". Conversely, the BBC complimented the film as a "stylish, gore-drenched shoot-em-up", and Dargis attributed its appeal not to the bloody violence but "[to] the filmmakers' commitment to genre fundamentals". Writing in a positive review, web-based critic James Berardinelli said that fans of "tight, tense, graphic horror" should be able to enjoy the same aplenty in Dawn of the Dead.

While Schwarzbaum and Dargis complimented James Gunn's script as "sharp" and propulsive, respectively, others took issue with what they believed to be the lack of plot and character developments. Morris found most of the characters to be too irritating that he believed audiences might want them "thrown from the mall roof to the throngs of undead". The Chicago Tribune said that the characters were clichéd and about as dumb as the undead, though sympathized with the "tragic" dilemma faced by Andre. Conversely, Berardinelli said that although there are moments in which the characters show a lack of common sense, "it's inevitable that most of them end up as one-dimensional throw-aways whose sole purpose is to increase the body count" and that "not many people go to a horror film looking for character development and drama". He and Ebert found the subplots of Kenneth and Andre to be "touching", with Berardinelli saying that these were "handled with a deft hand". Although Ebert was personally not on board with the characters' "risky" plan to escape from the mall in lieu of awaiting the zombies' natural death, he remarked that "taking chances makes for good action scenes". Mitchell criticized the plot as "strictly by the numbers" and said that the climactic gun store scene "shows why zombie pictures aren't unsettling anymore".

The ensemble cast was generally praised: comments ranged from "superlative" and "convincing down the line" to "respectable" and "annoying". Schwarzbaum and the Chicago Tribune described Sarah Polley's screen presence as a "perfect against-type heroine" with a "nice anxious stare". IGN was dismayed that least attention was given to Phifer's "naturally charismatic presence" with such a large cast, though felt that Rhames was effective as Polley's "quietly authoritative foil" and praised Jake Weber's performance in a "thankless role". While giving equal praise to Polley, Phifer, and Rhames, Gingold lauded Weber's existentialist role as "the best of all", as did the BBC, who also credited the actor with "bringing a redoubtable decency and charisma to a potentially bland part, like the young Roy Scheider in Jaws".

, Dawn of the Dead is Zack Snyder's highest-rated film on the website. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.

Retrospective
In 2005, George A. Romero spoke briefly of how dissatisfied he was with Dawn of the Dead during an interview with actor Simon Pegg for Time Out. Romero said that although the remake could pass for a good action film, he felt it was aimless and "more of a video game" for that matter, as well as maintained he was "not terrified of things running at me".

Numerous publications have named Dawn of the Dead as Zack Snyder's best film, with Den of Geek considering it his magnum opus. Revisiting the film on its 15th anniversary in 2019, Joe Lipsett wrote the following verdict for Bloody Disgusting:

"Fifteen years later, Dawn of the Dead completely holds up. The film's flaws are mostly at the character level, though having a dumb zombie baby and a few undeveloped red shirts in the mix is hardly a deal breaker. The action – particularly the opening scene and the propane explosion climax – in addition to the fantastic special effects makeup, the brief flirtation with found footage, and the reverence for its source text while introducing something new makes 2004's Dawn of the Dead one of the best remakes on the market."

Likewise, Dawn of the Dead has appeared on several lists of the top zombie films, including number 3 by Rolling Stone (2012), number 12 by Empire (2020), by Collider (2021), number 17 by IndieWire (2022), and by Variety (2023); as well as the best horror films of the decade, including number 3 by Dread Central (2010), number 8 by Bloody Disgusting (2009), number 52 by IGN, and number 55 by Rolling Stone (2020). The film made review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes's lists of "The 20 Scariest Opening Scenes in Horror Movie History" (at number 6), "The 25 Best Horror Movie Remakes" (at number 9), "The 30 Essential Zombie Movies" (at number 13), and "18 Memorable Horror Remakes".

In a June 2018 article for The Hollywood Reporter, Richard Newby opined that Dawn of the Dead helped revitalize the zombie genre along with 28 Days Later at a time when the United States "was ripe for the re-emergence of zombie movies" following the September 11 attacks, which he believes to have contributed to the Americans' "increased fear of biological weapons, fervent mass militarization and the burrowing question of who exactly are the people we call our neighbors". Likewise, author Stephen King, in the forenote of the 2010 edition of his book Danse Macabre, saw what he believed to be Snyder's subtext conveying the horrors induced by terrorist attacks, drawing parallels between the zombie apocalypse and a post-9/11 America. King described Dawn of the Dead as "genius perfected" in terms of its standing in the zombie genre.  South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone and South Korean filmmaker Yeon Sang-ho consider themselves to be fans of the film, citing it as an influence upon their works "Night of the Living Homeless" and the Train to Busan series, respectively.

Spiritual successor
On March 25, 2007, Variety announced that Warner Bros. Pictures would produce a new zombie film from a screenplay written by Joby Harold, based on an original idea conceived by Snyder. In a statement, Snyder said that he wanted the film to feel similar to Dawn of the Dead and 300 and that it would center around a father in Las Vegas "who tries to save his daughter from imminent death in a zombie-infested world". At the time, Wesley Coller was attached to executive produce, with Snyder and his wife Deborah Snyder producing through Cruel & Unusual Films (now known as The Stone Quarry). Snyder got the idea during Dawn of the Dead's production and wanted to explore a new evolution of the zombies. The film is not a sequel to Dawn of the Dead but rather a spiritual successor. Snyder realized that he needed a new origin story to develop the plot and create a new incarnation of the living dead. He titled the project Army of the Dead as a tribute to the works of George A. Romero. After languishing for several years in development hell, the distribution rights to the film were acquired by Netflix in 2019, and Snyder began shooting that same year.

Army of the Dead had a week-long limited theatrical release starting May 14 prior to its wider Netflix release on May 21, 2021.