With shows like The Walking Dead and iZombie on television, and big budget films like World War Z and Warm Bodies dominating in cinema, it’s clear that zombies are the monster of the moment. (Sorry mummies, vampires and werewolves.) And after successes like 28 Days Later and Zombieland, major studios will obviously continue push films like that in the theater.
It sounds great in theory, but no so much if you’re into making low-budget, political pieces like George A. Romero. The legendary director of Dawn of the Dead and Night of the Living Dead—the man who pretty much revolutionized the way zombie flicks are made—says that because of these huge projects, pitching the movies he prefers to make is much more difficult now.
In an interview with Indiewire, Romero said that “because of World War Z and The Walking Dead, I can’t pitch a modest little zombie film, which is meant to be socio-political…The moment you mention the word zombie, it’s got to be, ‘Hey, Brad Pitt paid $400 million to do that.’… It had to be a zombie film with just zombies wreaking havoc. That’s not what I’m about.”
The closest things we’ve had to that have been films like the UK’s The Girl With All the Gifts, or Maggie, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Abigail Breslin, but those kinds of films are few and far in between. Perhaps we’ll see a change and studios will be more open to a Romero-type project once again since higher budget movies like Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse are bombing at the box office. If Romero films have taught us anything, it’s to hold onto hope even when the world’s gone to madness.
(via ComicBook.com, image via screencap)
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