George Romero on Walking Dead's Impact on Zombie Movies

Style is taking over substance.

By Alex Osborn

Night of the Living Dead filmmaker George Romero has come forward to discuss his struggles in getting financing for a new zombie film, saying he can no longer make one of "substance," thanks in large part to AMC's hit series The Walking Dead.

In an interview with IndieWire, Romero noted that Land of the Dead, which is the biggest zombie movie he's ever made, didn't need such a large budget.

"That money went largely to the cast. They were great, but I don’t think that money needed to be spent," he said, adding that "Dennis Hopper’s cigar budget cost more than the entire production of Night of the Living Dead."

Romero then went on to cite the success of both The Walking Dead and World War Z as a major reason why he can no longer pitch "sociopolitical" zombie films with a modest budget. "I used to be able to pitch them on the basis of the zombie action, and I could hide the message inside that. Now, you can't," he said. "The moment you mention the word 'zombie,' it’s got to be, 'Hey, Brad Pitt paid $400 million to do that.'"

A sequel to Survival of the Dead was in the works and Romero said he was ready to shoot the film, but then he was "blind-sighted" by the success of Diary of the Dead. "One of the producers said, 'Let’s make another one quick.' I didn’t know what else I could talk about. Diary of the Dead talked about how social media is haunting us today. I didn’t have anything else to talk about," he explained.

In the end, he took the original premise and presented it in the style of a western, which wasn't received well. "Then, all of a sudden, here came The Walking Dead," he added, concluding that he simply could no longer make "a zombie film that had any sort of substance," because "it had to be a zombie film with just zombies wreaking havoc," which Romero says, "is not what I'm about."

Back in 2013, Romero turned down an offer to direct episodes of The Walking Dead, claiming it was was more of a "soap opera" than a zombie television show.

Alex Osborn is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter and subscribe to his video content on YouTube.

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