'Night Of The Animated Dead': Release Date, Cast And More

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Before there was The Walking Dead or any of its gazillion TV spin-offs, there was Night of the Living Dead. Soon there will be a new animated version of George Romero's classic, appropriately titled Night of the Animated Dead, and here's everything we know about it.

Night of the Animated Dead will have its digital release on September 21, 2021. For those who prefer physical media, you'll be able to purchase it two weeks later on October 5 when the Blu-ray and DVD combo becomes available. The combo pack should include a code allowing you to access a digital copy of the movie through Movies Anywhere.

The press release for Night of the Animated Dead explains that the Movies Anywhere platform connects "participating digital retailers that include Amazon Prime Video, FandangoNOW, Google Play, iTunes, and Vudu." These same retailers would be the place to go if you just want to rent or buy a digital copy of the movie.

Note that the rent option sometimes kicks in later for movies like this. The press release makes no mention of that part of things, but for the digital release and Blu-ray combo pack, it does list a USA price tag of $19.99. The DVD runs (or slow-walks, zombie-like) for $14.99. Pre-orders begin on August 10, 2021.

As its title implies, Night of the Animated Dead is an animated movie update of Night of the Living Dead. It offers a new take on an old story. Over the course of 70 minutes, it will feature new scenes not seen in the original 1968 black-and-white film. Technically, they should call it Night of the Reanimated Dead, not only because it involves reanimated corpses but because it's reanimating Romero's first film outside the official franchise he built.

Romero passed away in 2017. Because the movie's distributor forgot to add a copyright notice to it, the original Night of the Living Dead dwells in the public domain, meaning it's not subject to the same intellectual property laws as other Hollywood IPs. Warner Bros. Animation, Hemisphere Entertainment, and The Long Game have taken that ball and run with it to produce this film, which Warner Brothers Entertainmentwill distribute.

The press release for Night of the Animated Dead bills it as a story where "siblings Barbara and Johnny visit their father's grave in a remote cemetery in Pennsylvania," and "are suddenly set upon by zombies." Funny: that happens to us every time we visit remote cemeteries in Pennsylvania, too. We use Nerf's Zombie Repellant ammunition.

Barbara, on the other hand, "flees and takes refuge in an abandoned farmhouse along with stranded motorist Ben and four local survivors found hiding in the cellar."

Night of the Animated Dead is directed by Jason Axinn and produced by Michael J. Luisa, Ralph E. Portillo, Robert Feldman, and Kevin Kasha. It is based on the original '60s screenplay by Romero and John A. Russo, and Demente Animation Studio provides animation services. According to IMDb, LightBender handles the film's color.

Executive producers are Richard Potter, Thomas DeFeo, and Jamie Elliott.

Here's the official cast rundown via Warner Bros. Animation:

Night of the Animated Dead features the voice talents of Josh Duhamel (Jupiter's Legacy, Transformers), as Harry Cooper, Dulé Hill (The West Wing, Psych), as Ben, Katharine Isabelle (Ginger Snaps) as Barbara, James Roday Rodriguez (A Million Little Things, Psych) as Tom, Katee Sackhoff (The Mandalorian, Battlestar Galactica) as Judy, Will Sasso (MadTV) as Sheriff McClelland, Jimmi Simpson (Westworld) as Johnny and Nancy Travis (Last Man Standing) as Helen Cooper."

As you can see, it's somewhat star-studded. No trailer is available yet for Night of the Animated Dead, but we'll keep you posted on that as we shamble along like hungry zombies toward that September 21 release date.