Zombies never lie down and stay quietly dead, do they? And so it should be no surprise that contrary to earlier pronouncements, York’s cult zombie web series, Zomblogalype, will be returning from midnight as Wednesday night turns into Thursday morning.
First comes a launch of the new Zomblog Zero series earlier that night at the 1331 bar in Grape Lane, where producer Miles Watts, of MilesTone Films, will host the 7pm to 10pm event with the cast and crew in attendance.
“We’ll be giving a zombie talk and then screening the whole of Zomblog Zero from 8pm in the cinema at 1331, ahead of the series, which will screen online in six daily episodes at Zomblogalypse.com,” says Miles.
“Our 1331 event will be part of the Weird o' Wonderful Lecture Series that’s going round the country staging events concerning the World of the Supernatural.”
Explaining the return of Zomblog, Miles takes the country route as he says: “The story is that last year we reached the end of our zombie web series Zomblogalypse and pretty much left it there after three series. Originally, when we started the series, we’d planned just nine episodes, as our co-star Hannah Bungard was going off to live in South Korea, so we killed her character off.
“But then as Tony Hipwell and I continued making series two, the story developed in a new direction and we decided to make a third series when Hannah visited for a few weeks in 2010. But having killed her off, we realised the only way to bring her back – naturally – was as her own twin sister, who just happened to be a ninja.
“At the end of series three, there’s a pretty final finale, and that was planned to be the end of the series, but even after that, we knew Hannah would be visiting this year so we devised a way of getting us all back for another series.”
Their solution? “We decided to ‘re-boot’ the show as a prequel to series one, so it’s a ‘pre-boot’ really, which goes right back to the beginning, just after the zombie apocalypse has hit York,” says Miles. “It’s me, Hannah and Tony kicking around the flat getting used to each other and the End of the World…and we called it Zomblog Zero.”
All these ‘boots’ will no doubt make complete sense to the growing army of Zomblogalypse devotees. “We’re really surprised that Zomblogalypse has lasted three years and that there’s still demand from the fans for more,” says Miles.
“We now have a loyal army of Facebook and Twitter followers and tens of thousands of views on the video sites YouTube and Dailymotion, as well as various zombie sites, which makes us very proud to know that the show is entertaining so many people, including web series gurus Sandeep Parikh and Felicia Day, who make The Guild web series.”
Reflecting on the zombie comeback, Miles concludes: “Zomblogalypse evolved in 2008 from mine, Hannah and Tony’s friendship, and that’s something we very much celebrate in the new series, which is very silly and light on actual zombie gore, unlike the last two series.”
In other MilesTone Films news, last year’s festival-circuit film CrimeFighters will be soon be available on iTunes for download. “We’ve also shot our third feature film, Amber, back in April,” says Miles. “That’s now in post-production, and Tony and I are at present developing scripts for film and TV and making a few inroads there.”
Tickets for Wednesday night can be reserved at £5,concessions £3, at wowlecturesyork.gmail.com
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