STEPHEN ROMANO is an acclaimed multi-media artist,
whose unique jack-of-all-trades approach to the genres
of horror, crime fiction, sci-fi and exploitation has
produced innovative, award-winning work. He is an accomplished
illustrator, designer, screenwriter and print author.
His short stories, novels and comic books have garnered
critical acclaim from some of the most respected authors
and media sources in the world. As a screenwriter, Romano
has scripted many projects, but is most well-known for
his bold adaptation of Joe R. Lansdale’s INCIDENT
ON AND OFF A MOUNTAIN ROAD for Showtime’s Emmy
Award-winning MASTERS OF HORROR cable series...
Michael De Luca, the Oscar-nominated super-producer
of THE SOCIAL NETWORK and MONEYBALL, has announced that
he will produce the upcoming movie version of BLACK
LIGHT, the high concept supernatural thriller novel
written by Stephen Romano, in collaboration with writers
from the SAW franchise. “The movie deal is really
an exciting development for that project,” says
Romano. “It’s totally cinematic, this idea.
It’s about a haunted private dick specializing
in ghost cases and his battle with some especially nasty
bastards on board a high tech bullet train, so it was
always a natural fit for Hollywood. We went in with
the idea that it would make a killer screenplay. Actually,
the project was an unproduced script at first. So the
transition is natural and awesome. They’re now
in search of a director, and I think it will most likely
go to Sony Pictures...
Gallery Books at Simon and Schuster have announced
that Stephen Romano’s new high octane thriller
novel RESURRECTION EXPRESS will bow in mid-September
of 2012 in hardback. “I’m really thrilled
to be at Gallery Books,” Stephen says. “Because
they do Stephen King now, and the imprint has a great
pedigree. They were Pocket Books before they became
Gallery, and they’ve got a lot of my heroes, like
Don Winslow and James O’ Barr. Simon and Schuster
was a great place to go after getting my feet wet at
Little Brown, where I did BLACK LIGHT. But that book
was a collaboration, and supernatural horror action
stuff. This new one is a little more serious, a little
less comic book. It has the same awesome narrative drive,
but I’ve taken it to whole new level—and,
of course, this one is all mine...
Stephen Romano has just finished his commitment to
BLACK LIGHT, a high-octane suspense-action novel written
in collaboration with PATRICK MELTON and MARCUS DUNSTAN,
the scribes responsible for the last four films in the
SAW series. Begun in November of 2010, the BLACK LIGHT
project was completed in record time, which meant no
rest for the wicked on a brutal schedule . . . but the
results are wild and epic, coming to a bookstore near
you on OCTOBER 5th 2011, just in time for the Halloween
season! “The schedule was insane,” says
Romano.
Earlier this year, Stephen Romano was tapped by Grindhouse
Releasing and Renaissance pictures to create an all-new
commemorative one-sheet poster for the classic horror
film THE EVIL DEAD. Approved by Sam Raimi and Bruce
Campbell himself, the poster was commissioned exclusively
as a special souvenir item, promoting a “one night-only”
screening of the classic film with Campbell and the
“Ladies Of The Evil Dead” in attendance
at this year’s first-ever ZOMBICON
in Seattle, October 30-31.
Grindhouse releasing has announced it’s theatrical
re-release of Bill Lustig’s sleazebucket horror
classic MANIAC, and Stephen Romano has created the disturbing
new poster art which will haunt theatre lobbies. “It’s
a real honor to pay homage to the film this way, and
to the late, great Joe Spinell. When I saw Bill Lustig's
MANIAC for the first time, I literally got sick to my
stomach,” says Romano. “It was back in the
heyday of the slasher film, you know, back in the early
eighties, but this wasn’t really a typical slasher
film at all. It had all the gore and everything and
effects by Tom Savini—he even blew his own head
off with a shotgun. I was ripe for all that mayhem .
. . but the film really sneaks up on you in this terrible,
cruel, nasty way because it’s a film about the
KILLER and not about the VICTIMS.
After thirty years, ROGER CORMAN’S CULT CLASSICS
series presents the definitive video release of Luigi’s
Cozzi’s notorious Italian STAR WARS/BARBARELLA
mash-up, the one-and-only holy grail of “high
class” exploitation films, STARCRASH! Stephen
Romano is the co-producer of this lavish TWO DISC SPECIAL
EDITION, featuring an all new high definition digital
transfer of the film from the vaulted negative and a
Dolby 5.1 soundtrack to rock your home speakers, re-mastered
from the film’s original 4-track Dolby Stereo
sound masters. Romano is a known authority on STARCRASH,
having written the definitive “making of”
book about the film (which was ultimately never published
due to legal problems)...
Fresh off the success of his collaboration with Grindhouse
Releasing on their promo campaign for GONE WITH THE
POPE, Stephen Romano now unveils his latest creation:
the ambitious one-sheet poster for the new release of
the obscure 1970s exploitation classic AN AMERICAN HIPPIE
IN ISRAEL. “I’ve been working with Grindhouse
on and off for well over ten years now,” Romano
says. “That company basically amounts to Bob Murawski
and Sage Stallone (yeah, THAT Sage Stallone) sitting
in a room together and hatching crazy schemes to take
over the world. They’re both pretty major players
in Hollywood, but they’re completely insane. They
spend all their money on releasing sleaze classics and
old obscure horror films and stuff. The first thing
I did for them was the CANNIBAL FEROX soundtrack...
