Posted on 07/17/2017 5:50:23 AM PDT by ETL
The legendary creator of the "Night of the Living Dead" zombie franchise, George A. Romero, died Sunday at the age of 77, Fox News has confirmed.
Romero died "peacefully" while sleeping after a "brief but aggressive battle with lung cancer," his manager, Chris Roe, said in a statement. The filmmaker was "listening to the score of The Quiet Man, one of his all-time favorite films" with his family by his side, the manager added.
Romero co-wrote and directed "Night of the Living Dead" in 1968, which went on to become a cult classic.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
In the Walking Dead abd Fear the Walking Dead, George Romero never created his classic cult movie. Tgat is why the dead are not called Zombies.
Fat finger typos...
George A. Romero never set out to become a Hollywood figure; however, by all indications, he was very successful. The helmer of the groundbreaking “Living Dead” films was born February 4, 1940 in New York City, New York, to a Cuban father and a Lithuanian-American mother. He grew up in NY, until attending the renowned Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
After graduation, he began shooting mostly short films and commercials. He and his friends formed “Image Ten Productions” in the late 1960s and they all chipped in roughly US$10,000 a piece to produce what became one of the most celebrated American horror films of all time: Night of the Living Dead (1968). Shot in black-and-white on a budget of just over US$100,000, Romero’s vision, combined with a solid script written by him and his “Image” co-founder John A. Russo (along with what was then considered an excess of gore) enabled the film to earn back far more than what it cost, became a cult classic by the early 1970s and was inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress of the United States in 1999.
Romero’s next films were a little more low-key and less seen including There’s Always Vanilla (1971), The Crazies (1973), Season of the Witch (1972) (where he met his future wife Christine Forrest) and Martin (1978). Though not as acclaimed as Night of the Living Dead (1968), or some of his later work, these films had his signature social commentary while dealing with issues, usually horror-related, at the microscopic level. Like almost all of his films, they were shot in, or around, Romero’s favorite city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
In 1978, Romero returned to the zombie genre with the one film of his that would top the success of Night of the Living Dead (1968): Dawn of the Dead (1978). He managed to divorce the franchise from Image Ten, which screwed up the copyright on the original and allowed the film to enter into public domain, with the result that Romero and his original investors were not entitled to any profits from the film’s video releases. Shooting in the Monroeville, Pennsylvania, Mall during late-night hours, Romero told the tale of four people who escape a zombie outbreak and lock themselves up inside what they think is paradise before the solitude makes them victims of their own, and a biker gang’s, greed.
Shot on a budget of just $1.5 million, the film earned over US$40 million worldwide and was named one of the top cult films by Entertainment Weekly magazine in 2003. The film also marked Romero’s first work with brilliant make-up and effects artist Tom Savini. After 1978, Romero and Savini teamed up many times. Dawn of the Dead (1978)’s success led to bigger budgets and better casts for the filmmaker. First was Knightriders (1981), where he first worked with an up-and-coming Ed Harris.
Then came perhaps his most Hollywood-like film, Creepshow (1982), which marked the first, but not the last, time Romero adapted a work by famed horror novelist Stephen King. With many major stars and big-studio distribution, Creepshow (1982) was a moderate success and spawned a sequel, which was also written by Romero.
The decline of Romero’s career came in the late 1980s. His last widely-released film was the next “Dead” film, Day of the Dead (1985). Derided by critics, it did not take in much at the box office, either. His latest two efforts were The Dark Half (1993), (another Stephen King adaptation) and Bruiser (2000). Even the Romero-penned, Tom Savini-directed remake of Romero’s first film, Night of the Living Dead (1990), was a box-office failure. Pigeon-holed solely as a horror director and his recent films no longer achieving the success of his earlier “Dead” films, Romero has not worked much since, much to the chagrin of his following.
In 2005, 19 years after Day of the Dead (1985), with major-studio distribution, he returned to his most famous series and horror sub-genre he created with Land of the Dead (2005), a further exploration of the destruction of modern society by the undead, that received both excellent and indifferent reviews and even topped the United States box-office in its first week of release. He still resides in Pittsburgh.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Travis Stoffs
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001681/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm
Tastes like chicken.
Not sure what you mean. Are you saying that in those movies they say that he didn’t create the cult classic Night of the Living Dead?
Basically. The public has no basis for dealing with a zombie apocalypse, like knowing that it takes a head shot to kill them or his see a herd munching on someone that you should run and grab a weapon
Yeah I agree. We do have a zombie culture of sorts today. Mindless people who can’t go a few seconds without being on a smartphone device. Here in NYC I see these them all the time crossing busy and dangerous Manhattan streets not even looking where they’re going, but rather typing away on their handheld. I’m pretty sure I saved several lives over the past few years warning these fools that there were cars coming.
RIP, Mr. Romero.
L
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