When George Romero died from lung cancer in 2017, he left behind several ideas and screenplays for zombie movies.
One was a treatment, “Twilight of the Dead,” and his widow, Suzanne Desrocher-Romero, described it as a “summing up” of the franchise, an ending to what began with “Night of the Living Dead” in 1968 and continued for five decades and six flesh-gnawing movies.
George Romero was the rare artist who invented a major modern monster, one whose popularity rivals that of vampires and ghosts. The popularity of the TV series “The Last of Us” or the highly anticipated arrival of a new entry in the “28 Days Later” series this month tells us that the zombie is not going to end anytime soon. Its whole thing, after all, is to keep coming back.
But what about the Romero zombie? The original strain. What will happen to this fabled creature now that its creator is gone?
Three women in the Romero family are grappling with their memories of him at the same time as they’re trying to answer this question. His director daughter, his producer ex-wife and his producer widow are each developing movies with a distinct vision of the future of the undead. They don’t exactly share the same vision even as they’re pressing forward. The Romero zombie is very much alive — and very messy.
DESPITE BEING THE DR. FRANKENSTEIN of the genre, George Romero always said he never set out to make a zombie movie. In his telling, he couldn’t get investors for an Ingmar Bergman-inspired project taking place in the Middle Ages, so he resorted to something more commercial: the undead.
His work took off on the midnight movie circuit, distinguished by a mounting sense of dread, documentary-style realism splashed with gooey gore and a biting social commentary that became more overt, film after film. While he might have started making zombie movies as a compromise, he brought a new level of political ambition to horror, smuggling critiques of consumerism and race relations into what was seen as mere exploitation.
One way to view the rest of his career is as a series of efforts to escape the zombie, only to be drawn back in, often to inspired results. Desrocher-Romero recalls him telling producers that he wanted his last film to be called “Enough of the Dead.” (They instead went with “Survival of the Dead.”)
But zombies have a way of following you, even after death.
Desrocher-Romero, 66, is producing a movie that explores the end of the Romero zombie. George’s previous wife, Christine Romero, 76, a collaborator of three decades, is working on an untitled project that returns to the beginning, taking place at the same time as the action in “Night of the Living Dead.”
Both movies are in development, and when they will reach screens is unclear. Arriving now is “Queens of the Dead,” a giddily flamboyant horror-comedy premiering at the Tribeca Festival on Saturday. Tina Romero, George’s 41-year-old daughter, has taken the black-and-white origins of the zombies her father created and splashed them with color and drag flair. She imagines the zombie apocalypse set in a divided queer Brooklyn dance scene. It’s a departure but still rooted in loyalty to the Romero legacy.
In her apartment in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene neighborhood, Tina Romero, a lanky, cheerful presence, is supportive of all the family zombie projects, then lowers her voice to confess: “I’m happy to get there first.”
ZOMBIES WERE NOT the stuff of childhood nightmares for Tina. They were just the family business. She learned to walk on the set of “Day of the Dead,” and while being around her father’s movies led to an interest in filmmaking, she never wanted to follow in his lurching footsteps. Her taste leaned more to movie musicals than apocalyptic mayhem.
She focused on dance at Wellesley, where she choreographed a 35-performer production inspired by the Michael Jackson music video for “Thriller,” which itself paid homage to the Romero zombie. Hard to escape her father’s legacy, though she tried.
At New York University film school, she said, she sought to keep her family connection a secret, not wanting any nepo-baby advantages. After graduation, she found a career as a D.J. leading dance parties in New York. She adopted an alter ego, DJ TRx, and a rabbit mask, a motif that shows up in “Queens.” When one of those parties became engulfed in controversy, a promoter posted a manifesto online titled: “When will the queer community stop devouring its own?”
This is when zombies really caught up to Tina Romero. She described it as a “lightning bolt” moment, spawning the idea of a zombie movie about rival dance parties, a concept she ran by her father, who encouraged her to pursue it not long before he died.
She had in mind monsters that were playful, fun, escapist. “Rather than ripped-out chest cavities, I wanted to make a delicious candy-colored world,” she said, describing herself as more optimistic about humanity than her father. “I’m an edgy cheeseball. Horror cute is my aesthetic.”
Whereas her father’s movies usually contained a political subtext, her movie treads lightly. A mix of glam and gore, “Queens” begins with a drag queen’s high heels clickety-clacking down a sidewalk. By the end, a mace made of stilettoes becomes a potent, stylish weapon.
But her film does honor George Romero’s spirit. “Queens of the Dead” quotes “Night of the Living Dead” (“They’re coming to get you, Barbara”), and like that movie it includes, pointedly, a Black protagonist, played by Jaquel Spivey from the 2024 “Mean Girls.”
If there is one thing all the Romero women share, it’s an unshakable belief that the zombie must be slow. “I would never dream of using fast zombies,” Tina Romero said, describing them wryly as a betrayal of the family.
“The fact he made them slow automatically makes them a little silly,” she said. That said, she doesn’t give gore and violence short shrift: A character played by Margaret Cho does some unspeakable things with a power drill. But Tina Romero said generating dread was not the primary goal.
Nor was it, she added, with George Romero. “I don’t think my dad was interested in terrifying people,” she said. “He described zombies as the most blue-collar monsters. They could be your mom or your kid. An immediate mirror.”
“Queens of the Dead,” written by Tina Romero and Erin Judge, avoids an origin story, in keeping with George Romero’s original intent. “It was very important to me to not explain where they came from,” Tina Romero said of the zombies, describing such dutiful exposition as reductive. “It’s not about science or a nuclear meltdown,” she added. “We as humans want to explain it, but I didn’t want to answer that question. This is where the Romero zombie is different. It’s not ‘28 Days Later.’”
The virtue of an unresolved origin is a theme that came up when I talked to George Romero more than 15 years ago. He told me he thought the lack of explanation was not only scarier but also more real. We don’t always have the answers, he believed. Why should the movies?
GEORGE AND CHRISTINE ROMERO, Tina’s mother, were married for 29 years, creating a life together in Pittsburgh, where “Night of the Living Dead” takes place. She helped with casting and scripts, and even acted in films like “Martin” (1977), “Dawn of the Dead” (1978) and “Monkey Shines” (1988). But when George Romero traveled to shoot “Land of the Dead” in 2005, he never returned, settling down in Toronto, a seismic event in the family.
“My parents were an institution I did not see crumbling,” said Tina Romero, who was in college at the time. “It was tough. My dad did it in a way that was not awesome. Shoes in the closet. Pens in the desk.”
She made an effort to stay close, befriending his new wife, visiting him in Toronto. But the effect of the abrupt separation on the family lingered.
Her mother, Christine, said, “I can never forgive the way he left,” adding that she only saw him once afterward and it did not go well. As she spoke in an Upper West Side apartment, her new partner, the artist George Nama, sat across from her. He went to high school with George Romero and even collaborated with him on an exhibition related to a short story the director wrote. At one point in the interview, he stood up to clarify that he remained friends with the filmmaker to the end, then left the room.
Christine said it took her six months after her husband left to realize he wasn’t coming back. “I never had closure,” she said. “To this day, I don’t know why this happened.”
Lack of explanation, she implied, made the split hit harder.
When George Romero died, Christine inherited several of his scripts, which she had no luck selling, and the rights to the 1990 remake of “Night of the Living Dead.” When the producer Roy Lee (“A Minecraft Movie”) of Vertigo Entertainment contacted her about expanding “the Romero zombie universe,” she saw the potential and they sold her rights to MGM Amazon, which planned a $35 million feature and signed up LaToya Morgan (“The Walking Dead”) to write the script. There was talk of faster zombies early in the process, but Lee said they would be slow Romero-like zombies.
This movie adopts a fashionably Hollywood approach to the intellectual property, building out and around the better-known source material. The film takes place during the same time frame as “Night of the Living Dead,” but unfolds from the perspective of the wife of the Black protagonist played by Duane Jones, who was killed by the police at the end.
Asked about the legacy of George Romero, Christine laughed and said dismissively: “To me, there’s none.” She moved the subject to her daughter, who she said had a mind like a director from a young age.
Christine read an early script for “Queens,” and felt déjà vu visiting the New Jersey set, which she said Tina ran just like her father: Both were low-key, warm, and made decisions quickly. “It was thrilling and kind of nostalgically sad for me,” she said, “because that part of my life is over.”
Her movie is currently in limbo, with MGM contending, in her words, “we don’t like your rights,” given that “Night of the Living Dead” is now in the public domain. “It’s been a battle,” she added.
Lawyers got involved. “What they want me to do is say, ‘Nobody else can make anything to do with “Night of the Living Dead,”’” Christine said. “I can’t say that, because Suzanne, his new wife, is making ‘Twilight of the Dead.’” She sighed. When Romero died, he left Desrocher-Romero in control of most of his estate. “She doesn’t know the first thing about film,” Christine Romero said, wearily. “Beyond horrible. But that’s what it is.”
DESROCHER-ROMERO WAS WORKING as a bartender when George Romero walked into her establishment during postproduction of “Land of the Dead.” She said she had never heard of him. But they instantly hit it off. Like Christine Romero, she said he was bitter about the business of movies, feeling overlooked and underappreciated. Desrocher-Romero said she felt a great responsibility both to George’s final screen project and to his legacy as an artist outside the genre. It’s why she created a foundation dedicated to his work. (Tina Romero is vice president.)
She hopes to start shooting “Twilight of the Dead” in Hawaii in the fall. Brad Anderson (“The Machinist”) is directing a cast that includes Milla Jovovich. Asked if there will be characters from previous George Romero zombie movies, she said no, then hedged: “There are a couple things that will come back in” from older movies.
If the film is true to George Romero’s ethos, it won’t be “just blood and guts,” she said. “The zombie was really a metaphor for humans. We are the problem.”
Desrocher-Romero added that George Romero never would have been interested in returning to “Night of the Living Dead.” He always focused on the future. She recalled asking him over a game of Scrabble what his legacy would be. He replied, No one cares. She reflected on that: “Those words haunt me.”
AS HER PREMIERE APPROACHED, Tina Romero admitted to some anxiety over the expectations of her father’s fan base. “I hope people don’t think it’s too fluffy and light for the times,” she said. “But if you want to see something dark, go to ‘The Substance,’ then see this. You’ll sleep better.”
Promoting his final movie, George Romero gave an online interview in which he spoke about the end of his marriage. “I don’t know if Chris got tired of me or I got tired of her, whatever happened there I don’t even want to go into that,” he said, adding that the thing that made him most proud was his daughter, Tina, working on a zombie movie.
Tina Romero had not seen this interview. After I sent it to her, she wrote back saying it was one of the only instances of him talking about divorce that she had seen. “While I don’t love his take on it (a little blasé), I am touched by what he says about me,” she wrote. “Feels like a little love letter from him at a pivotal moment in my life.”
Jason Zinoman is a critic at large for the Culture section of The Times and writes a column about comedy.
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