South Africa’s contribution to the zombie genre, simply titled THE DEAD, has been slowly building buzz via festival showings since last year, and now it’s planning to attack big screens.

Howard J. Ford, who wrote and directed the film with Jon Ford, today revealed that both U.S. and UK distribution is currently being finalized. “Sorry it’s taken a long while to get news out,” he says. “In truth, it’s taken us a year longer than anticipated for distribution to be agreed but for very good reason: We could have taken 100-plus deals from distributors for THE DEAD to just go out on DVD but we didn’t nearly kill ourselves shooting this movie on 35mm film across Africa for it not to go out on the big screen.”

While he isn’t ready to reveal the name of the company that has picked up THE DEAD, in which an American mercenary and a local soldier flee and fight the undead on the African plains, Ford does promise that “distribution in the U.S. will happen theatrically, initially in 20 major cities this spring and then spread outward depending on how many people actually turn up to see it.” We’ll keep you posted, and you can read our early review of THE DEAD here, see the trailer below and find its official website here.