ZOMBIE MOVIE MASTER GEORGE A. ROMERO DIES

Zombie movie maestro George A. Romero has died at age 77. The ‘ Night of the Living Dead’ writer/ director died Sunday in Toronto, his agent David Gersh confirmed to USA TODAY. Romero, who died from lung cancer, wrote on Facebook in May that he was fighting a respiratory infection and couldn’t fly. After developing a cult following with his small- budget 1968 classic ‘ Night of the Living Dead,’ Romero put out plenty of zombie films, including ‘ Dawn of the Dead’ ( 1978) and ‘ Day of the Dead’ ( 1985) and the more recent ‘ Land of the Dead’ ( 2005). When his first movie about undead flesh- eaters came out, “nobody wrote about it in any kind of context at all,” Romero told USA TODAY in 2010. Now, “people write their thesis about it. I don’t think it deserves half of the treatises about it.”

2009 PHOTO BY EPA Romero