George Romeo Is Working On THE ZOMBIE AUTOPSIES. He Turned Down THE WALKING DEAD Directing Job

I admit, even as a George A. Romero fan, I admit that Romero’s works in recent years have been slightly disappointing, they were neither exciting nor groundbreaking, but I’m still hopeful that the godfather of zombie flicks would come back strong with his next film. Speaking of which, io9 chatted with Romero who revealed that he’s optioned a book called THE ZOMBIE AUTOPSIES and its adaptation is in the works..

“A friend of mine recently wrote a novel called The Zombie Autopsies, and it’s about an isolated group of people doing autopsies on zombies during the zombie apocalypse and trying to figure out what the hell caused this. They come upon this discovery.

[Edit Note: SPOILERS Ahead]

The scientists discover that this is not a naturally occurring virus, they deduce that it must have been created by somebody. And they later discover that it was created by people who were trying to topple the economy. So that’s a unique way in to talk about the economy, but it’s not my story. Steven C. Schlozman is the guys name, he’s a Havard Psychologist who has somehow been swept into the zombie craze and is writing zombie novels.”

“…I’m working on the screenplay right now.”

“I may decide to do it that way, I don’t know. This is Steve’s story, not mine. It’s more like The Andromeda Strain. It’s very tense and very medically correct. This guy’s a doctor, it’s all about being medically correct. I think about it like the first Hammer Frankenstein film, which was all about very graphic scenes of brains floating in blood and things like that. I want it to be perfectly accurate, almost shockingly so.”

Autopsy on zombies huh?! Interesting.
It opens up a whole new set of possibilities of how those brain-eating sons of b*tches came to be.
But here’s what’s even more interesting. The website asked Romero what he thought of AMC’s record breaking series THE WALKING DEAD and Romero revealed that he hasn’t watched the series yet and he turned down the offer to direct some of the episodes. But why?

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.

Do you think Romero made a poor decision for saying no to THE WALKING DEAD?