Launch Gallery: '90s Horror: 50 Scary Movies From the End of the Century
Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here. I didn’t think anything else was actually that good or accomplished.” “I vote in the Academy, and I wound up voting for ‘La La Land’ just because I thought it set about a purpose and it accomplished it. “I had heard all the hype and all the stuff about, ‘It’ll make you weep,’ but I don’t know, there was something about it that just didn’t appeal to me. “I have to confess to not liking ‘ Moonlight,'” Romero said after being asked what recent movies he’s liked or disliked. It isn’t as difficult to choose between films he didn’t make. It’s hard to say - it’s like, ‘What kid do you like?'”
READ MORE: George Romero Says Nobody Will Finance His Next Zombie Movie and ‘Night of the Living Dead’ Wouldn’t Get Made TodayĪs for his own movies, Romero reluctantly admitted that 1985’s “Day of the Dead” is his favorite, but “only because there was not a bad apple, not a bad moment on the set, everybody was there to make the movie and it was wonderful. “There was no way to prevent that from happening.” I felt that I almost found a niche, but it was bound to happen,” he said of the way the zombie genre has become something bigger and more unwieldy. It’s not gore, it’s not just horror - I’ve always tried to put a little something in there. “I’ve had a terrific run.” Asked whether it’s strange to step back and see what the genre he helped innovate with “Night of the Living Dead” half a century ago has taken on, he said, “Of course, but mine have always been political. “It’s not really resentment,” he clarified. I was ready to do another one, a $2-3 million one, and nobody will finance a zombie film now.” Hollywood is only interested in the undead when they have blockbuster potential, which something like “World War Z” ($540 million in box-office returns) does but a small-scale “…of the Dead” installment might not. “I harbor a lot of resentment…I used to be the only guy on the zombie playground, and unfortunately Brad Pitt and ‘The Walking Dead’ have made it Hollywood-ized.
Romero considers himself more of “a story guy” anyway, and the stunt-intensive nature of “Road of the Dead” “isn’t cup of tea.” (The press notes cite “Ben-Hur” as a direct influence.)īirman is the zombie progenitor’s “best friend in the biz,” so co-writing the project together was an organic process Matt Manjourides and Justin Martell are also onboard as producers. (He lives in Canada, where he’s a permanent resident.) That setup is certainly in keeping with some of the biggest action movies in recent years, a connection Romero readily copped to: “It’s ‘Fast and the Furious’ with zombies at the wheel,” he said.
“There was a sequence in ‘Survival of the Dead’ where there’s a zombie that’s behind the wheel of a car, and Matt proposed an idea: ‘How about zombies that know how to drive!?'” Romero explained over the phone during a 4th of July interview.
It also serves to remind that, from “Dawn” to “Day” to “Land” and now “Road,” the decades-old franchise is ever-changing. The film’s premise - “In the darkest days of the zombie apocalypse, the last safe place on earth is anything but, as a mad despot uses the spectacle of high-octane carnage to keep control of his populace” - suggests a “Mad Max” vibe. The two are headed to Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal later this month to change that, and Romero is excited about hitting the road and moving forward.