Did Brad Pitt kill the zombie genre?
George A. Romero is largely credited with inciting zombie insanity with his 1968 cult classic Night of the Living Dead. Now, nearly 50 years after his undead besieged strangers trapped inside a rural farm, Romero believes that the film genre he helped create has died the same gruesome death his characters have suffered over the years. . And the person Romero blames for taking the beloved zombies out of him? Brad Pitt, who starred in and produced the big-budget adaptation of Max Brooks World War Z in 2013.
Let Romero explain.
I think Brad Pitt actually killed him, says Romero of the genre in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. Although, according to the godfather of the dead, Pitt is not the only culprit. The Walking Dead and Brad Pitt killed it all.
Explaining the sequence of industry events that led to the demise of the zombies, Romero adds: The Dawn of the Dead remake made money. I think quite a lot of money. So [the 2009 zombie comedy] Zombieland made money and all of a sudden Brad Pitt shows up and spends $ 400 million or whatever World War Z does. [Editor's note: According to Term, the movie cost about $ 220 million.] Romero continues, Max Brooks is a friend of mine, and I thought the movie was not at all representative of what the book was, and the zombies They were, I don't know, ants crawling over the wall of Israel. Armed ants. You might as well do Naked Jungle, says Romero, referencing Charlton Heston's 1954 film about armed ants taking over a plantation.
In fact, Romero seems so dismayed with the current state of the zombie genre that he would rather see him come out of his misery entirely than have to continue watching film and television projects that he considers unsatisfactory.
As for me, I'm content to wait until some kind of zombie dies. My films, I have tried to put a message to them. It's not about the blood, it's not about the element of terror in them. For me, it's more about the message. That is what it is and I am using this platform to be able to show my feelings of what I think.
In an interview with indieWire last week, Romero explained in more detail why World War Z and The Walking Dead have destroyed, in his words, the zombie genre.
Now, because of World War Z and The Walking Dead, I can't release a modest little zombie movie, which pretends to be sociopolitical. He used to be able to launch them on the basis of zombie action, and he could hide the message within that. Now you can not. The moment you mention the word 'zombie', it has to be 'Hey, Brad Pitt paid $ 400 million to do that'.
Though World War Z skyrocketed on budget, which Vanity Fair's Laura M. Holson wrote about in 2013 — the movie still grossed over $ 500 million worldwide, generating enough profit to warrant a sequel. Meanwhile, The Walking Dead maintained 13 million loyal viewers throughout its recent sixth season, and show runners suggested the AMC show could continue for another six iterations. So while Romero may have a point about Pitt and The Walking Dead destroying opportunities for independent zombie properties, there are millions of audience members who have shown that Romero's statement about the genre is dead, at least in In terms of earnings, you are wrong.
