News
‘Dead Island 2’ Lives And It’s Found a Developer
This is a good day. It’s good because I finally have something positive and hopeful to write about the Dead Island series, after about a year’s worth of cancellations, shut-downs, abysmal spin-offs and HD re-releases I’m still not sure are necessary.
But today is different. Today I get to say something nice about Dead Island 2, which seems to be back on track and in the very capable hands of developer Sumo Digital.
We're super excited to announce we are working with @deepsilver on #deadisland2! @deadislandgame https://t.co/vLSbTT3FK8
— Sumo Digital (@SumoDigitalLtd) March 10, 2016
“Sumo showed so much understanding of the brand, had creative ideas and an excellent, vision that was aligned with our own,” explains Koch Media head honcho Klemens Kundratitz in a chat with MCV. “It just made perfect sense for us to move the project to them. We will reveal more details at a later stage, but for now I’d like to say that we are obviously super excited about the progress that we are making with them.”
This isn’t the first time Sumo has put their mark on an established franchise — the studio has previously contributed to the LittleBigPlanet, Disney Infinity and Forza franchises, and they were recently enlisted by Microsoft to reboot Crackdown, again.
“It’s an honour to be charged with the evolution of such an important franchise in Deep Silver’s catalogue,” adds Sumo boss Paul Porter. “We’re looking forward to exceeding fan expectation with an ambitious design that we’re confident will take bone-crunching, visceral, zombie action to a whole new level.”
That’s all we know right now. Stay tuned for more details.
All of us here at Bloody Disgusting are deeply saddened to learn that George A. Romero Foundation Founder and President Suzanne Desrocher-Romero has passed away.
GARF shared in a statement on socials, “It is with a heavy heart that we announce the passing of Suzanne Desrocher Romero. Suzanne passed away of natural causes on June 24 at her home in Toronto after a prolonged illness.”
The statement continues, “Suzanne was the fierce leader of the George A. Romero Estate and The George A. Romero Foundation. She worked tirelessly to preserve George’s legacy. Her work at the foundation will continue to inspire and live on for generations to come. The family asks for privacy at this time.”
Desrocher-Romero founded GARF in 2018, after her late husband’s passing in 2017, and has been a fierce advocate for his legacy and the arts. It was her mission to “strengthen horror as a serious field of global study,” and she was a tremendous fighter on behalf of Romero’s works and supporting new filmmakers inspired by his legacy.
It was Desrocher-Romero who spearheaded the recovery and restoration of The Amusement Park, and, as the person in charge of the George A. Romero estate, worked closely with author Daniel Kraus on completing unfinished novels like Pay the Piper and The Living Dead. She most recently celebrated the restoration of her favorite of Romero’s zombie films, Day of the Dead, and was hard at work producing the upcoming film Twilight of the Dead.
That passionate advocacy led to Suzanne Desrocher-Romero becoming family to Bloody Disgusting as well.
2023 marked the start of an ongoing partnership between Bloody FM and GARF on The Dead, a scripted audio series spanning multiple seasons that saw Desrocher-Romero working closely with the Bloody FM team and mentoring the series’s contributing writers with GARF. To say her loss will be felt internally is an understatement.
“Anytime George Romero is mentioned is good, because what we are doing is to provide a healthy legacy. We’re uplifting his legacy, we’re supporting the archive, and we’re also supporting the Horror Study Center. So, all of these three things are what the Foundation is striving to do. As far as I’m concerned, the more we say George Romero’s name, the better it is,” Desrocher-Romero recently told BD.
It’s the perfect encapsulation of her unwavering enthusiasm for supporting Romero’s legacy and the horror genre, and just a glimpse at how much she contributed to preserving it. She is, in short, an inspiration.
We send our deepest condolences to Suzanne Desrocher-Romero’s family, friends, and GARF.
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