Why George Romero Turned Down Walking Dead
George Romero as we told you some time back was approached by AMC to direct part of The Walking Dead Season 2. I was kind of curious as to why that never happened but it seems that it wasnt AMC that got cold feet but rather George Romero who said no.
Quite surprising that he would not want to be involved considering it would open up his great talent to a whole new audience plus he is fantastic at interlinking social commentary. Walking Dead would have benefited from his depth. He in a recent interview with Io9 explained why he wanted no part of it saying;
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.
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.
What do you think? Would you have loved to see George Romero direct some of the second season of Walking Dead as much as I would have? Sound off in the comments.
