In 2005, after a 20-year hiatus, Romero returned to his zombie universe with Land of the Dead.  The film was the biggest budget entry into the Dead series and featured Pittsburgh in its most prominent role despite being the first of the series filmed entirely outside of the region.  The film continues the bleak tone of Day as it depicts a stratified Pittsburgh with the rich living in safety and luxury within the fortified and barricaded Golden Triangle of Downtown Pittsburgh, while the rest of society toils amongst slums outside the gates with threats both human and undead.

The roots of the film date back to July 25, 2001 and the initial drafts present a different story than what fans know as Land of the Dead.  The project was originally titled ‘Dead Reckoning’ after the vehicle of the same name in the film.  Romero has stated in interviews that he did not want to continue the use of the ‘of the dead’ format but was later convinced to return to it.  This first imaging as ‘Dead Reckoning’ has some fascinating differences worth highlighting.

• An opening scene that went right for the scares: Riley lying in bed with a woman; she climbs on top to straddle him and he is suddenly faced with a zombie dropping maggots onto his face! Riley bolts awake and the audience realizes it is a dream.  This surely would have been a memorable jump scare to reignite the franchise with a bold statement of zombie carnage.  Alas, the studio did not like the opening and provided the feedback “let’s not open with implied necrophilia”.
• Differences in characters and dynamics:  Riley was originally meant to be an African American lead and embodied many of the traits that are later distributed among several characters.  Riley and Cholo are always at odds and the main conflict is between them with very little between Kaufman and Cholo.  Kaufman is not the supreme leader of Fiddler’s Green but one of many (although he does eventually solidify his control).  Slack is a mercenary employed by Kaufman to assist Riley in capturing and retuning Dead Reckoning and doesn’t show up till over halfway through the film.
• No zombie army! One of the most iconic aspects of Land of the Dead is Big Daddy and his zombie army, but they were completely absent from the original script.  Indeed it is hard to imagine the film without the scene of the zombie army rising from the river.  Instead, we get one scene in a basement laboratory in which zombies are being experimented on in ways that resemble Day of the Dead.  The lead scientist expresses excitement over having trained one zombie to eat cat food rather than human flesh.  At least until a later scene when the scientist is distracted and the lust for flesh returns and the zombie dispatches him in familiar gruesome fashion. 
• A much more explosive ending: the climax of the story plays out in a much different manner.  Dead Reckoning is mostly destroyed atop Mt Washington, killing Cholo along with it.  The vehicle is in three segments and mercenaries destroy the segment containing Cholo just before he can launch missiles at Fiddler’s Green.  Riley and Charlie then destroy the middle section containing the rest of Cholo’s crew before driving off in the caboose setting off fireworks on their way to Canada.  The studio pushed back that this ending was unsatisfying as it lacked any cathartic confrontation between the protagonists and antagonists.  Meanwhile, in Fiddler’s Green, Kaufman and the other elites plan to escape the city by helicopter as it is obvious the zombies are loose from the basement lab and taking over the building.  One helicopter leaves but the pilot is killed by a stowaway zombie causing the chopper to go off course and crash into the Green, exploding, and destroying the top of the building and Kaufman with it.  While not stated outright in any studio response, one might suspect that this ending became untenable after the world events just a few months later.

A few revisions of this version continue through October 2001 followed by a long hiatus.  The project reemerges in January 2003 under the name Land of the Dead and follows the shifted storyline that we are familiar with from the film released in June of 2005. 

-Ben Rubin