Cinefantastique Online

In an article titled “Horror Auteur is Unfinished with the Dead,” the New York Times gives some glimpses into George Romero’s thinking on his latest film, DIARY OF THE DEAD. After the studio-financed LAND OF THE DEAD (which Romero calls “a grueling shoot, and it was all getting too big, too Thunderdome), the zombie auteur wanted to get back to his low-budget independent roots, so he wrote a script that could be shot cheaply for DVD release; however, Romero’s partner interested Artfire Films in financing the project, which was eventually picked up for release by the Weinstein Company.

For the new film, Romero says he backed off the gore to emphasize the underlying theme. All of his zombie films have been snapshots of America at a particular time. The new version is about the infotainment age, when everyone with a blog can be a reporter:

“It’s scary out there, man,” Mr. Romero said, gesturing at a laptop as he sat in his apartment here, chain-smoking Marlboros. “There’s just so much information, and it’s absolutely uncontrolled. Half of it isn’t even information. It’s entertainment or opinion. I wanted to do something that would get at this octopus. It may be the darkest film I’ve done since ‘Night of the Living Dead.’ ”