As the guy who singlehandedly spawned a legion of brain-hungry zombie crawlers with his groundbreaking classic Night Of The Living Dead almost 50 years ago, people tend to listen when filmmaker George Romero speaks on the genre.
And he's laying the blame for what he sees as its current rotten, flat-lined state squarely on the shoulders of one A-list superstar: Brad Pitt.
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Romero - speaking to The Hollywood Reporter about the new restoration of his scrappy 1968 black-and-white masterpiece, which saw a band of strangers holed up in a barnyard as they fought off hordes of braindead lurkers - was asked about the future of his 'Dead franchise', which now stands at six entries, following 2009's independently-financed Survival Of The Dead.
And, well, he didn't mince words.
![Night Of The Living Dead zombie master George Romero says Brad Pitt ruined the genre.](/web/20161104133644im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/f/v/f/s/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsfvca.png/1478036122197.jpg)
"I've sort of dropped out of it. The Dead are everywhere these days. I think really Brad Pitt killed it," he said.
"The Walking Dead and Brad Pitt just sort of killed it all."
Romero, it seems, was not a fan of Pitt's 2013 passion project, World War Z, a big budget blockbuster that saw Pitt starring as a UN investigator on the search for a viral cure to a worldwide zombie outbreak.
"The remake of Dawn Of The Dead made money, I think pretty big money," Romero said of Zach Snyder's $102 million-grossing 2004 surprise hit.
![A bloodied Brad Pitt in World War Z.](/web/20161104133644im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/f/v/d/6/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsfvca.png/1478036122197.jpg)
"Then Zombieland made money. And then, all of a sudden, along comes Brad Pitt and he spends $400 million or whatever the hell to do World War Z." (The film's budget was actually closer to $190 million.)
"I thought the film was not at all representative of what the book was and what zombies were," the 76-year-old added, dismissively.
![AMC's immensely popular The Walking Dead.](/web/20161104133644im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/n/y/b/g/b/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsfvca.png/1478036122197.jpg)
"I don't know, ants crawling over the wall in Israel. Army ants. You might as well make The Naked Jungle."
"As far as I'm concerned, I'm content to wait until sort of zombies die off."
Unfortunately for Romero, he may be waiting a while.
Just last week, the Season 7 debut of AMC's immensely popular zombie series The Walking Dead pulled in over 20.8 million viewers in the US alone, its second-highest audience haul ever.