Mark Steensland talks to Fangoria about his “fan film” Dead@17:
Producer/director Mark Steensland got in touch with Fango to chat up DEAD@17, the short horror flick he wrapped last month and which is currently in postproduction. Based on Josh Howard’s indie graphic-novel series of the same name (Steenland tells us, “It’s an incredibly popular title; Wizard magazine named it #9 on their ’40 Things You Need to Know About Indie Comics in 2007’ list”), DEAD@17 is described by its director as basically a “fan film.” He notes that while he received author Howard’s blessings, the filmic rights “belong to someone else,” and that he “hopes that the owners will see our film as an audition tape of sorts—kind of like how the SAW guys made the short based on their feature idea and used that to get the whole thing going.”
Filmed in Erie, PA and starring Jessica Ciccone, Katelyn Gracy and Ryan Krysiak, DEAD@17 follows “17-year old Nara Kilday, who is brutally murdered,” the director says, “and then a bunch of zombies start appearing, under the control of an evil guy named Abraham Pitch. Nara, as it turns out, is one of what’s called ‘the resurrected,’ and she comes back from the dead and saves her best friend Hazy during a zombie attack by chopping them up with an ax. That’s where our film ends—it’s 10 minutes long—but it’s where the story really starts.”
The article goes on to say that “plans are afoot” to try and screen it at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con and then to take it on the road. Howard mentioned the film wrapping up production over on his blog.
