George Andrew Romero (; February 4, 1940 – July 16, 2017) was an American and Canadian filmmaker, writer, editor, and actor. Regarded as an influential pioneer of the horror film genre, particularly zombie films, he has been described as an "icon" and the "father of the zombie film".
The first three films in his Night of the Living Dead series—Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978), and Day of the Dead (1985)—are widely regarded as among the best and most influential horror films ever made, and were major contributors to the modern cultural image of the zombie.
Noted for his frequent social commentary, Romero had a prolific career outside of zombie films, although still largely within the horror genre. The Crazies (1973), The Amusement Park (1975), Martin (1977), Creepshow (1982), and Monkey Shines (1988) are regarded as minor cult works, as is his anthology television series Tales from the Darkside (1983–1988). His ventures outside horror include the feminist drama film Season of the Witch (1972) and the action film Knightriders (1981), while his final three films—Land of the Dead (2005), Diary of the Dead (2007), and Survival of the Dead (2009)—form the second half of his Night of the Living Dead franchise.
Early life Romero was born on February 4, 1940, in the New York City borough of the Bronx, the son of Anne Romero (née Dvorsky) and George M. Romero, a commercial artist. His mother was Lithuanian, and his father was a Spanish-born Cuban, having emigrated to Cuba as a child. His father has been reported as being born in A Coruña, with his family coming from the Galician town of Neda,George A Romero: un director de cine casi nedense , article by historian Manuel Pérez Grueiro in Revista de Neda. Anuario Cultural do Concello de Neda, nº 11, pp 21-24, 2008, re-published on Central Librera Ferrol bookshop's website.Os zombis teñen orixe galega, Praza Pública, October 1, 2013. although Romero once described his father as of Castilian descent.
Raised in the Parkchester section of the Bronx, he would frequently ride the subway into Manhattan to rent film reels to view at his house. He was one of only two people who repeatedly rented the opera-based film The Tales of Hoffmann; the other was future director Martin Scorsese. Romero attended Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Career 1960s
In 1960, after graduating from college in Pittsburgh, Romero, with a $20,000 loan from his uncle, and Rudy Ricci and Russ Streiner, they incorporated The Latent Image, to produce commercials. They produced commercials for Iron City Beer, Duke Beer, U.S. Steel, Calgon, and Heinz Ketchup, and New York Film Festival winning industrial shorts. Romero directed, for "Mr. Roger's Neighborhood," the "Picture, Picture" segments and "Mr. Rogers Gets a Tonsillectomy" (1968).
In the late 1960s, with nine friends, including screenwriter John A. Russo, Russ Streiner, and Karl Hardman, Romero formed Image Ten Productions. This is the production company that produced Night of the Living Dead (1968). Directed by Romero and co-written with John A. Russo, the film became a cult classic and a defining moment for modern horror cinema.
Among the inspiration for Romero's filmmaking, as told to Robert K. Elder in an interview for The Film That Changed My Life, was the British film The Tales of Hoffmann (1951), from the Powell and Pressburger team.
1970s and 1980s
The three films that Romero created that followed Night of the Living Dead — There's Always Vanilla (1971), Jack's Wife / Season of the Witch (1972) and The Crazies (1973) — were not as well received as Night of the Living Dead or some of his later work. The Crazies, dealing with a biohazard accident that incites an epidemic of homicidal madness, and the critically acclaimed arthouse success Martin (1978), a film that deals with the vampire myth, were the two well-known films from this period.
Romero continued to do work outside of theatrical cinema. In 1974, he directed O. J. Simpson: Juice on the Loose, a TV documentary about O. J. Simpson's then-active football career. In 1975, Romero was commissioned by the Lutheran Service Society of Western Pennsylvania to direct The Amusement Park, an educational film about elder abuse. It was little-seen at the time of its 1977 debut and was for many years considered to be a lost film. A rediscovered print was re-released in 2021, at which time it met with critical acclaim.
Romero returned to the zombie genre in 1978 with Dawn of the Dead. Shot on a budget of $640,000, the film earned $55 million worldwide and was later named one of the top cult films by Entertainment Weekly in 2003.
Romero shot Knightriders (1981), about a group of modern-day jousters who reenact tournaments on motorcycles, and Creepshow (1982), written by Stephen King, an anthology of horror tales modeled after 1950s horror comics. The cult-classic success of Creepshow led to the creation of Romero's Tales from the Darkside, a horror anthology television series that aired from 1983 to 1988. Romero also drafted "Pinfall", a screenplay for Creepshow 2 based on a draft by Stephen King ("Pinfall" was ultimately never filmed). He made the third entry in his Dead series with Day of the Dead in 1985. As the decade drew to a close, Romero directed Monkey Shines (1988), about a service animal.
1990s Romero updated his original screenplay and executive-produced the 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead directed by Tom Savini for Columbia/TriStar. Savini is responsible for the makeup and special effects in many of Romero's films including Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Creepshow, and Monkey Shines.
The early 1990s featured the directorial efforts Two Evil Eyes (1990), an Edgar Allan Poe adaptation in collaboration with Dario Argento, and The Dark Half (1993), from a novel written by Stephen King. In 1991, he made a cameo appearance in Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs (1991) as one of Hannibal Lecter's jailers.
In 1994, Romero shot a short film, Jacaranda Joe, about people running into a community of Bigfoot. Filmed at Valencia College in Florida, it was the first film that Romero shot entirely outside of Pittsburgh.
In 1998, Romero produced and directed an unaired pilot about professional wrestling entitled Iron City Asskickers. It was released on DVD and VHS in 2021.
In 1998, he directed a live-action commercial promoting the video game Resident Evil 2 in Los Angeles. The 30-second advertisement featured the game's two main characters, Leon S. Kennedy (portrayed by actor Brad Renfro) and Claire Redfield (Adrienne Frantz), fighting a horde of zombies while in Raccoon City's police station. The project was familiar territory for Romero and the Resident Evil series has been heavily influenced by the Dead series. The commercial was popular and was shown in the weeks before the game's actual release, although a contract dispute prevented it from being shown outside Japan. Capcom was so impressed with Romero's work that it was strongly indicated that he would direct the first Resident Evil film. He declined at first — "I don't wanna make another film with zombies in it, and I couldn't make a movie based on something that ain't mine" — although in later years, he reconsidered and wrote a script for the first movie. It was eventually rejected in favor of Paul W. S. Anderson's version.
In the mid 1990s, he wrote a script for a film adaptation of the first original Goosebumps book Welcome to Dead House. It was eventually rejected altogether, although Romero's screenplay is kept archived by The University of Pittsburgh.
2000s
2000 saw the release of Bruiser, about a man whose face becomes a blank mask. In 2004, Universal Studios produced and released a remake of Dawn of the Dead, with which Romero was not involved. Later that year, Romero kicked off the DC Comics title Toe Tags with a six-issue miniseries titled The Death of Death. Based on an unused script that Romero had written for his Dead series, the comic miniseries concerns Damien, an intelligent zombie who remembers his former life, struggling to find his identity as he battles armies of both the living and the dead. Typical of a Romero zombie tale, the miniseries includes ample supply of both gore and social commentary (dealing particularly here with corporate greed and terrorism — ideas he explored in his next film in the series, Land of the Dead). Romero has stated that the miniseries is set in the same kind of world as his Dead films, but featured other locales besides Pittsburgh, where the majority of his films take place.
Romero directed Land of the Dead, released in 2005. The film's working title was Dead Reckoning. Actors Simon Baker, Dennis Hopper, Asia Argento, and John Leguizamo starred and the film was released by Universal Pictures (who released the Dawn of the Dead remake the year before). The film received generally positive reviews.
Romero collaborated with the game company Hip Interactive to create a game called City of the Dead, but the project was canceled midway due to the company's financial problems.
In August 2006, The Hollywood Reporter announced that Romero signed on to write and direct George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead, which follows a group of college students filming a horror movie who proceed to film the events that follow when the dead rise.
After a limited theatrical release, Diary of the Dead was released on DVD by Dimension Extreme on May 20, 2008, and later on Blu-ray on October 21, 2008. Shooting began in Toronto in September 2008 on Romero's Survival of the Dead (2009). The film was initially reported to be a direct sequel to Diary of the Dead, but the film features only Alan van Sprang, who appeared briefly as a rogue National Guard officer, reprising his role from the previous film, and did not retain the first-person camerawork of Diary of the Dead. The film centers on two feuding families taking very different approaches in dealing with the living dead on a small coastal island. The film premiered at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival. Prior to the US theatrical release of May 28, 2010, Survival of the Dead was made available to video on demand and was aired as a special one-night showing on HDNet on May 26, 2010.
Some critics have seen social commentary in much of Romero's work. They view Night of the Living Dead as a film made in reaction to the turbulent 1960s, Dawn of the Dead as a satire on consumerism, Day of the Dead as a study of the conflict between science and the military, Land of the Dead as an examination of class conflict, Diary of the Dead as a film made in reaction to the "emerging media" and Survival of the Dead as a study on war and conflict.
2010s
In 2010, Romero stated that he had plans for two more Dead films which would be connected to Diary of the Dead and they would be made depending on how successful Survival of the Dead was. Romero, however, said that his next project would not involve zombies and he was going for the scare factor, but offered no further details.
Romero made an appearance in the second downloadable map pack called "Escalation" for the video game Call of Duty: Black Ops. He appears as himself in the zombies map "Call of the Dead" as a non-playable enemy character. Romero is featured alongside actors Sarah Michelle Gellar, Danny Trejo, Michael Rooker, and Robert Englund, all of the four being playable characters. He is portrayed as a powerful "boss" zombie armed with a movie studio light.
In 2012, Romero returned to video games recording his voice for Zombie Squash as the lead villain, Dr. B. E. Vil. Zombie Squash was released by ACW Games for the iPad in November 2012.
In 2014, Marvel Comics began releasing Empire of the Dead, a 15-issue miniseries written by Romero. The series is broken up into three acts, five issues each, and features zombies and vampires.