Surprise for Cast of ‘Return of the Living Dead’ Sequel. They Were Replaced by AI

A crowdfunded sequel to the movie Return of the Living Dead was uploaded last weekend — but producer Richard Driscoll is drawing criticism for what he did to the 1985 punk/zombie classic.

Kotaku reports:
[The release of the movie] came to the surprise to the original cast, who were attached to star in the follow-up. Instead it seems Driscoll opted to use AI to generate the film…

In 2024, Driscoll, who operates his own no-budget streaming service “DragonFLIX,” launched an Indiegogo page for “TRASH’s REVENGE Return of the Living Dead Universe.” Unlike other fan projects, this one had a large portion of the original cast involved, with stars Randolph and Linnea Quigley acting as producers. It also threw in Quigley’s fellow Sorority Babe in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama Michelle Bauer and the Oscar nominated Eric Roberts, who has seemingly been in everything except The Living Dead….

But after some confusion and radio silence between the cast and director, this incredible movie did not come to be. Last Halloween night, Driscoll pushed out [the almost entirely AI-generated] The Return of the Living Dead: Aftermath… The results won’t surprise you. Robotic line delivery. Nonsensical sequence of events. Object impermanence. Everything’s wet. Everyone looks shocked. At one point the video just flips around like you’re watching on a phone someone dropped. And while the Return cast didn’t film any of this footage, their likenesses are peppered throughout.

“It turned out to be a fiasco,” says Quigley. “I warned him, “Whatever you do, don’t do any AI, because people don’t like it, the fans don’t like it.” Living Dead alumni, even those who weren’t attached to this film, have spoken out against Aftermath. They seem most concerned about the existing and continued use of their likeness, given that Driscoll has seemingly pivoted ‘Trash’s Revenge’ into an additional project. Randolph encourages those who provided any funding to ask for a refund through their credit card company. While Romero’s original film was public domain, Return of the Living Dead was not. Randolph also encourages Amazon, who bought MGM in 2022, to take legal action.

A review on Reddit calls it “the worst ‘film’ I’ve ever seen,” a production that “manages to not only be the worst zombie film ever made but is also the nadir of exploitation filmmaking.

[T]hings quickly descend into madness and we get lots of bits of A.I. reporters out on the streets being attacked by A.I. zombies… [T]here are some A.I. cops battling it out too…

Read more of this story at Slashdot.