‘The Walking Dead’ Greg Nicotero and Jimmy Miller to Film George Romero’s Zombie Classic ‘Night of the Living Dead’

special: While Comic-Con attendees dressed as carnivores and attended zombie-themed events, filmmaker Greg Nicotero and Monster Agency Productions edited a movie from George Romero’s 1968 film Jimmy Miller’s Mosaic. night of the living dead. With questionable origins and a budget of around $115,000, the movie encompasses the entire zombie genre and is considered the undisputed horror movie of all time.

Nicotero is one of many film, television, and video game creators to capitalize on Romero’s pioneering venture in the carnivorous corpse genre. It shot 39 episodes. dead livingIncluding the series finale, which is still coming to an end. Despite having a long list of genre credits, Nicotero learned his craft from Romero’s films. Like Miller, they were both from Pittsburgh and they all knew each other well. Nicotero said the idea for the movie came after attending Romero’s funeral in 2017. There, he heard the director share stories about his old friends’ groundbreaking cinema. Nicotero is still stunned by the prospect of making such a venerable horror film on his first try by the Pittsburgh creators, who shot commercials and industrial films together.

“They really had no experience,” he said. “One of the actors was a makeup artist. It was this group that shot some commercials and sat down and said, “Hey, we should make a movie.” And one of the group said, ‘Yeah, let’s make a horror movie. They always make money. I love the spirit of a group of people who come together and lead the way with no idea what they’re doing.

“They found this old farmhouse in Pennsylvania,” he said. “One of the interesting things for me is that when you watch the movie, it feels like a movie noir because of the light. There are many of them, they just simply did not have the money to buy so much light. Thus, they created a unique lighting style for many scenes played with the Ra motif. night of the living dead Even when they printed copies for distribution, they used cheap film stock, so there was a lot of contrast. Everything black became black, and everything white became truly white. Added to this strange film noir, What Will Come Out of the Dark and Carry Me? It was a perfect storm of events with a group that loves to work together and roll up their sleeves.

Nicotero said the cemetery was a place of pilgrimage; Romero filmed the opening scene where a zombie cuts his two brothers while laying wreaths on their parents’ tombstone. Nicotero said he brought Simon Pegg and Quentin Tarantino to stop at the famous spot. The farm was already destroyed. “This is not so elf, the place where the graves were moved; The cemetery is just as they left it,” he said.

After Romero’s memorial service, where he remembers his friends’ quirks on set and Romero’s eccentric tics, he “put on a Zapata cloak to go out with his friends. Long live Zapata, and he didn’t play with girls” – Nicotero had the idea to make a movie that he would direct. They got the necessary rights and are teaming up with Suzanne Desrocher-Romero, Romero’s widow, Nicotero and Miller, along with Brian Witten for Monster Agency and M. Con Riley for Mosaico. They immediately go to the authors.

“What I want to do wood– a genre movie that shows this boy’s heart and character against this background the magnificent seven A group of people came together who had no idea what they were doing. night of the living dead”

He explains that he will shoot recreated scenes from the original movie in black and white and the rest in color, and you should be able to see things like melted chocolate for the blood to come out.

Besides being a universal forerunner of horror cinema, Romero’s experience in his most famous movie was ultimately painful. night of the living dead It grossed $30 million and nearly $200 million, making it one of the highest-grossing films in history with a budget of $115,000. Instead of making Romero rich, the mistake left ample opportunity for the opportunists to loot his movie like zombies.

“That was the problem,” Nicotero told Deadline. They changed the title at the last minute. It was originally called the movie. night of the carnivoresAnd they changed the title at the last minute night of the living dead, they accidentally left it copyrighted. only after night of the living dead It turned out if they realized it was out of copyright, and that’s why there were so many versions available on DVD. They went to court with the Walter Reade Organization, which removed the copyright. So George’s first foray into the movie world grappled with copyright lawsuits they lost. I think with these royalties, George’s career could have taken a completely different direction. But he was a slave to clerical error that cost him millions of dollars.”

Pittsburgh-based Romero continued to explore the zombie and horror genres with his films, and met Nicotero there when he was 15. When she learned the composition of the genre from Romero’s collaborator Tom Savini, she was devastated and deviated from her work plans. Being a doctor is a different game of dice and dice. Nicotero has worked on many of Romero’s films, including the 1985 sequel Zombies. the day of death. According to him, Romero refused to leave his Hollywood home and often more or less thought that the zombie genre he created created a cottage industry. But once he did.

“one. when is the season dead living “You should call George and see if he’s interested in directing an episode,” said Nicotero. “I called George and he laughed a little. He said, “Look, for a long time I was the only kid in the arena. Now you have video games, books, DVDs, movies. I’m fine with your zombies being my zombies and your zombies being your zombies. I respected that. He completely invented the genre. How can you not be offended when game developers get their hands on something you’ve created? I definitely attribute the zombie resurgence to video games. When you own a first-person shooter video game demonic residence Y house of deathIt opened the zombie genre to a new generation of people.”

Where does all this place Romero in the pantheon of horror filmmakers? Nicotero placed this near the top, in part because Romero missed subtle messages like consumerism in 1978. Dawn of the Dead Or the guts of a black actor—Duane Jones—as the protagonist who is shockingly caught in the film’s final take, mistaken for a zombie after his gruesome evening. Did Romero’s racism make any cultural sense, as law enforcement snipers didn’t bother to check if the black hero was alive before they shot him? Nicotero thinks so, though Romero shuns such things, he insists that Jones is the best actor they’ve ever had and that it’s the best way to end the movie.

“I put George in the same category as Tobe Hooper or Wes Craven, these renegade young filmmakers who challenge the system,” Nicotero said. “So they said, ‘You can’t show that, it’s terrible’ or ‘You can’t show that, it’s offensive’. Meanwhile, over time, with the war and social upheaval in the United States, “You can’t tell me what to show. I show what I want to show. this was the result Texas Massacre Night of the Living Dead Last House On The Left The Hills Have Eyes, all those really scary horror movies. George was one of the first people to break the system. When people say, “You should move to California, you should be in Hollywood,” they say, “No, I’m not. Hollywood is here. He was loyal to his crew, to his city, and continued to make all of his movies in Pittsburgh. Still, for George, there’s no reason to say, “I’ll do anything I want.” Jimmy and I wanted to celebrate him and our home in Pittsburgh, where he filmed.”