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Screening of final horror film celebrates life of Surrey director on his birthday

Dan Zachary, 51, fell in love with filmmaking while at Queen Elizabeth Secondary
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Surrey-based filmmaker Dan Zachary in a photo posted to the “Remembrance At The Rio” event page on Facebook.com.

Family and friends of Surrey-based filmmaker Dan Zachary will gather to watch his final movie Saturday morning (Jan. 14) during a celebration of his life.

Zachary made the horror film “The Deep Web: Murdershow” prior to his death at Surrey Memorial Hospital on New Year’s Eve, following “a brief and tragic illness,” according to a Facebook post. He was 51.

At Vancouver’s Rio Theatre, the “Remembrance At The Rio” event for Zachary will include a private screening of his Hadron Films production.

Saturday also happens to be the birthday of the Manitoba-born Zachary, aka “Bigg Deez,” who is remembered as a talented filmmaker, director, producer, actor and prankster.

Longtime friend John Knox, an organizer of the Rio event, first met Zachary while working on a sketch-comedy show at Surrey’s old Java Joint in the late-1990s.

Earlier that decade, both had graduated from Queen Elizabeth Secondary, where Zachary fell in love with filmmaking. “I was a few years behind him — Dan graduated in 1990 and I finished in 1995,” Knox elaborated.

By the early-2000s, Knox and Zachary co-wrote a horror movie called “Darkest Hour,” about a murder-mystery party gone wrong at an abandoned summer camp.

Zachary’s more recent “The Deep Web: Murdershow” is about how “a podcaster’s search for clues into his sisters death lands him on the deep web where uncovers The Murder Show, a site where the highest crypto bidder selects how the victim will be killed,” says a post on the movie website imdb.com.

“The film hasn’t been released yet,” Knox noted. “It’s a real tragedy with the timing of his death. The company producing the film has graciously allowed us to host a screening of the film for cast and crew and also Dan’s friends and family, as a way of celebrating his life and also seeing his latest work in a theatre, as it was intended.”

Knox remembers Zachary has a very creative guy.

“He made blood and gore and rubber masks and things out fibreglass, and was just a crafty fellow,” Knox said of their early days in filmmaking. “If there was anything to do to make a movie, he’d do it.

“Back in high school,” Knox, added, “that’s when he began to pick up a camera and make some sketch-comedy bits and horror movies. He was really driven to do that stuff and take it to a professional level, and he’d be the first person to tell you that there’s no invitation into that world, you really have to kick in the door and do it for yourself, show people what you can do, and that’s what we did on the first movie we did together 20 years ago.”

A bio on imdb.com says Zachary directed several short films, music videos and TV pilots, and in recent years moved into the world of voice acting and on-screen work. His acting credits include “Deadpool” and “Deadpool 2,” “DC’s Legends of Tomorrow” (as Astra’s Heavy, in 2020), the 2014 version of “Godzilla” 2015’s “Minority Report.”

An obituary posted to memorialsource.com says Zachary leaves behind “the love of his life,” fiancé Bailey Mills, among other loved ones. “We sincerely wish Dan and Bailey had more time together to enjoy the wedding they have been planning since their engagement in 2020,” the post says.



tom.zillich@surreynowleader.com

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Tom Zillich

About the Author: Tom Zillich

I cover entertainment, sports and news stories for the Surrey Now-Leader, where I've worked for more than half of my 30-plus years in the newspaper business.
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