The Walking Dead - George Romero Turned Down Offer to Work on An Episode

George Romero, who pretty much put movie zombies on the map, says he doesn't really get the hype about the super-trendy creatures. And, in fact, he's never watched one episode of AMC's "The Walking Dead," although he's hosting the network's "FearFest" which kicks off Sunday, Oct. 16, with the show's season 2 premiere.

"I haven't seen any of the episodes," Romero tells Zap2it.

And not only has he not watched the show, he tells us he turned down an offer to work on an episode.

"Frank [Darabont] and [Greg] Nicotero were calling me and asking me to do one of these," he says. "I don't have any desire to do one because it's not -- my zombies live in sort of my universe and they're political and they're different from whatever that is."

He continues: "I'm not trying to capitalize on a trend. When I want to write about something, I try to use zombies to do it because it's easier than trying to write a piece about citizen journalism. It's easier to put zombies in it and make fun of it."

Is he just sick of zombies in general?

"I'm not really a fan of the fact that they've become as popular as they've become because I used to think that I had them in my pocket somewhere," says Romero. "And now they're sort of all over the place and I'm not thrilled."

What drew him to zombies?

"Nothing," says Romero. "I wanted some sort of a catastrophe -- I wanted to write a story about how humans behave in the face of catastrophe and how they fail to recognize what's going on. I've made six films, but they're really all about the human characters and really political. They're not slash-em-up zombie movies. Even though there's gore in them, that's not what they're about. Whereas some of the video games are more first person shooter and have fun with killing these zombies."

Source: Zap 2 It