About The Blackest Dawn

In the spring of 2003, on the tiny campus of Grace Christian School in the tiny town of Louisville, Mississippi, big ideas were brewing. I was 15 and had been at GCS for less than a year but already I had made three friends and we were ready to take over the world. Miles Byrd, Cameron Spann, Josiah Meints, and I had grown addicted to a four-player zombie shooter game called Hunter: The Reckoning. We knew that a movie adaptation of this game would be wildly successful so we began crafting it. We borrowed a few of the main characters from Hunter and began laying the outline for a sci-fi epic. The story followed four characters across war-torn Pennsylvania frontier as they attempted to save a small group of humans. The characters came together by chance and their mix of backgrounds and personality created chemistry?

Gabriel Cortez – a sage Mexican ex-priest in his 50’s. He is slightly naïve about the war but he cares deeply for people and is good with a sword.

Joel Pishano – a maverick FBI agent searching for his missing team. He struggles to be the leader of this motley crew.

Zealot – a bionic supersoldier created by the U.S. military. He is searching for any identity beyond the barcode on his neck.

Derek Banks – a hot-headed gang member. Gabriel finds him trying to steal his car. He and Gabriel develop a father-son bond.

The Goblins – Strange subterranean creatures who have lived peacefully under northern Greenland since the dawn of time. When an apocalyptic collision of nuclear warheads causes acid and radioactive material to seep into their water supply, they are forced to surface and they begin ravaging bands of human survivors in search of water.

ZOMBIES – Zombies were actually not a part of the original Blackest Dawn script. However, in the current reincarnation of the Blackest Dawn world, zombies are freshly dead humans who have been resurrected by goblin spells.