George Andrew Romero (; February 4, 1940 – July 16, 2017) was an American and Canadian filmmaker, writer, editor, and actor. Regarded as an influential pioneer of the horror film genre, particularly zombie films, he has been described as an "icon" and the "father of the zombie film".
The first three films in his Night of the Living Dead series—Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978), and Day of the Dead (1985)—are widely regarded as among the best and most influential horror films ever made, and were major contributors to the modern cultural image of the zombie.
Noted for his frequent social commentary, Romero had a prolific career outside of zombie films, although still largely within the horror genre. The Crazies (1973), The Amusement Park (1975), Martin (1977), Creepshow (1982), and Monkey Shines (1988) are regarded as minor cult works, as is his anthology television series Tales from the Darkside (1983–1988). His ventures outside horror include the feminist drama film Season of the Witch (1972) and the action film Knightriders (1981), while his final three films—Land of the Dead (2005), Diary of the Dead (2007), and Survival of the Dead (2009)—form the second half of his Night of the Living Dead franchise.
Romero was born on February 4, 1940, in the New York City borough of the Bronx, the son of Anne Romero (Dvorsky) and George M. Romero, a commercial artist. His mother was Lithuanian, and his father was from Spain and had emigrated to Cuba as a child. His father has been reported as being born in A Coruña, with his family coming from the Galician town of Neda, although Romero once described his father as of Castilian descent.
Raised in the Parkchester section of the Bronx, he would frequently ride the subway into Manhattan to rent film reels to view at his house. He was one of only two people who repeatedly rented the opera-based film The Tales of Hoffmann; the other was future director Martin Scorsese. Romero attended Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
In 1960, after graduating from college in Pittsburgh, Romero, with a $20,000 loan from his uncle, and Rudy Ricci and Russ Streiner, they incorporated The Latent Image, to produce commercials. They produced commercials for Iron City Beer, Duke Beer, U.S. Steel, Calgon, and Heinz Ketchup, and New York Film Festival winning industrial shorts. Romero directed, for "Mr. Roger's Neighborhood," the "Picture, Picture" segments and "Mr. Rogers Gets a Tonsillectomy" (1968).
In the late 1960s, with nine friends, including screenwriter John A. Russo, Russ Streiner, and Karl Hardman, Romero formed Image Ten Productions. This is the production company that produced Night of the Living Dead (1968). Directed by Romero and co-written with John A. Russo, the film became a cult classic and a defining moment for modern horror cinema.
Among the inspiration for Romero's filmmaking, as told to Robert K. Elder in an interview for The Film That Changed My Life, was the British film The Tales of Hoffmann (1951), from the Powell and Pressburger team.
It was the filmmaking, the fantasy, the fact that it was a fantasy and it had a few frightening, sort of bizarre things in it. It was everything. It was really a movie for me, and it gave me an early appreciation for the power of visual media—the fact that you could experiment with it. He was doing all his tricks in-camera, and they were sort of obvious. That made me feel that, gee, maybe I could figure this medium out. It was transparent, but it worked.
The three films that Romero created that followed Night of the Living Dead: There's Always Vanilla (1971), Jack's Wife / Season of the Witch (1972) and The Crazies (1973) were not as well received as Night of the Living Dead or some of his later work. The Crazies, dealing with a bio spill that induces an epidemic of homicidal madness, and the critically acclaimed arthouse success Martin (1978), a film that deals with the vampire myth, were the two well-known films from this period.
Romero returned to the zombie genre in 1978 with Dawn of the Dead. Shot on a budget of $640,000, the film earned $55 million worldwide and was later named one of the top cult films by Entertainment Weekly in 2003.
Romero shot Knightriders (1981), about a group of modern-day jousters who reenact tournaments on motorcycles, and Creepshow (1982), written by Stephen King, an anthology of horror tales modeled after 1950s horror comics. The cult-classic success of Creepshow led to the creation of Romero's Tales from the Darkside, a horror anthology television series that aired from 1983 to 1988. Romero also drafted "Pinfall", a screenplay for Creepshow 2 based on a draft by Stephen King ("Pinfall" was ultimately never filmed). He made the third entry in his Dead series with Day of the Dead in 1985. As the decade drew to a close, Romero directed Monkey Shines (1988), about a service animal.
Romero updated his original screenplay and executive-produced the 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead directed by Tom Savini for Columbia/TriStar. Savini is responsible for the makeup and special effects in many of Romero's films including Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Creepshow, and Monkey Shines.
The early 1990s featured the directorial efforts Two Evil Eyes (1990), an Edgar Allan Poe adaptation in collaboration with Dario Argento, and The Dark Half (1993), from a novel written by Stephen King. In 1991, he made a cameo appearance in Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs (1991) as one of Hannibal Lecter's jailers.
In 1994, Romero shot a short film, Jacaranda Joe, about people running into a community of Bigfoot. Filmed at Valencia College in Florida, it was the first film that Romero shot entirely outside of Pittsburgh.
In 1998, Romero produced and directed an unaired pilot about professional wrestling entitled Iron City Asskickers. It was released on DVD and VHS in 2021.
In 1998, he directed a live-action commercial promoting the video game Resident Evil 2 in Los Angeles. The 30-second advertisement featured the game's two main characters, Leon S. Kennedy (portrayed by actor Brad Renfro) and Claire Redfield (Adrienne Frantz), fighting a horde of zombies while in Raccoon City's police station. The project was familiar territory for Romero and the Resident Evil series has been heavily influenced by the Dead series. The commercial was popular and was shown in the weeks before the game's actual release, although a contract dispute prevented it from being shown outside Japan. Capcom was so impressed with Romero's work that it was strongly indicated that he would direct the first Resident Evil film. He declined at first — "I don't wanna make another film with zombies in it, and I couldn't make a movie based on something that ain't mine" — although in later years, he reconsidered and wrote a script for the first movie. It was eventually rejected in favor of Paul W. S. Anderson's version.
In the mid 1990s, he wrote a script for a film adaptation of the first original Goosebumps book Welcome to Dead House. It was eventually rejected altogether, although Romero's screenplay is kept archived by The University of Pittsburgh.