Why George Romero Will NOT Be Directing An Episode Of The Walking Dead

Io9.com got a chance to chat with George Romero at the kick off to AMC’s Fear Fest Celebration. In the interview Romero gives his thoughts about The Walking Dead and why he won’t be directing an episode of the series even though he’s been asked.  He also talks about the difference between his zombies and The Walking Dead’s zombies and the political nature of his movies.  And if your interested, he also talks about his new movie “The Zombie Autopsies”.

What do you think of Walking Dead?

I love the books, I haven’t seen any of the episodes. Listen I love Frank [Darabont], I know he’s done a good job. I love the books, I never watched any of the episodes because… my zombies are sort of my own. I didn’t want to be part of it. Producers called and said, “do you want to direct some of these,” and I said no. Because I just didn’t think it was me. I’ve been waiting to see the whole first season, which I missed because I’ve been traveling. I’ve been waiting to look at it, but I haven’t seen any of it.

You said they’re not not “my zombies.” So what’s a Romero zombie?

My zombies are purely a disaster. They are a natural disaster. God has changed the rules, and somehow this thing is happening. My stories are about the humans who deal with it stupidly, and that’s what I use them for. I use them to sort of make fun of what’s going on in a number of societal events. And that’s it, I don’t use them to just create gore. Even though I use gore, that’s not what my films are about, they’re much more political. That’s it. This whole zombie revolution, it’s unbelievable. We were in France last week, and 3,000 zombies came out for the zombie walk. We’re going to Mexico City next week and there are 5,000 zombies expected to show up. I don’t know what that’s about. I contributed to video games more than movies. If you want to look at it in a purely economic term, no zombie film has ever broken 100 million dollars [at the box office], except for Zombieland. That’s the only one. But video games, they’ve sold hundreds and thousands of copies, so I think really this whole zombie craze is about video games more than film.

You mention that your zombies were more political, how has the political message in the first Dead films changed over the years, do you think their anti-consumerism, anti-miltary messages are still applicable?

I think it changes. I did one about citizen journalism, did one that was basically about Iraq, the war. If I have something to say, if I want to write, for example, about citizen journalism, if I tried to write a serious piece about that — first of all, I don’t have the skill to write for Lapham’s Quarterly and I can have much more fun writing about it and including zombies and making it a bit silly, a bit slap stick and a bit irreverent. And it’s easier for me to do it that way. So yeah, I think that if they nuke Philadelphia, I will probably — as long as I survive the carnage — I’ll probably sit down and try to write a zombie thing about the nuking of Philadelphia. It’s my way of being sort of relevant or being able to comment on current situations, without being pretentious. And it’s my way of making a career out of it. I guess I’m maybe the Michael Moore of horror.

Are there any other societal issues floating around like now that you would like to attack for another film?

I would love to do something about the economy. But zombies are not good mathematicians — I don’t think they’re going to be out selling cheesy mortgages or anything like that. So it’s tough for me to see that. A friend of mine recently wrote a novel called The Zombie Autopsies, and it’s about an isolated group of people doing autopsies on zombies during the zombie apocalypse and trying to figure out what the hell caused this. They come upon this discovery.

To read the entire interview click here!

-Dane

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