George A. Romero -- the writer and director behind the cult-classic horror flick "Night of the Living Dead" -- died Sunday. He was 77. 
 
 Romero has been called the "father of modern horror films." He died following "a brief but aggressive battle with lung cancer," his longtime production partner Peter Grunwald told CNN. 
 
 Grunwald said Romero passed away "peacefully in his sleep" while "listening to the score of 'The Quiet Man,' one his all-time favorite films, with his wife Suzanne Desrocher Romero, and daughter, Tina Romero, at his side." 
 
 "[Romero] leaves behind a loving family, many friends and a filmmaking legacy that has endured, and will continue to endure, the test of time," Grunwald said. 
 
 Romero was born in 1940 in New York City. His big break came with the release of "Night of the Living Dead" in 1968, which was his first feature-length movie and made on a $114,000 budget. The movie, snubbed by the mainstream press, became a smash hit among horror aficionados and gore lovers. 
 
 Romero worked on several other projects to little box office success before the first "Living Dead" sequel, "Dawn of the Dead," debuted in 1979 to great fanfare and critical acclaim. An initial backlash to some graphic special effects helped boost the film's notoriety, drawing more to theaters. 
 
 "Romero has created the ultimate American nightmare. We are feeding on ourselves. Some consider this one of the most important American films of the last decade and it should be seen," a review in the "Motion Picture Guide" reads. 
 
 Romero continued his work in the horror genre throughout the 1980s. In 1990, he rewrote the original "Living Dead" screenplay for the franchise's first remake. That was followed by "Land of the Dead" in 2005. at 89 
 
 In 2006 Romero made "Diary of the Dead," launching a new cycle of "Living Dead" zombie flicks, which also includes 2009's "Survival of the Dead." 
 
 His most recent project was a a graphic novel entitled "Empire of the Dead," which was published by Marvel. 
 
 New York magazine writer Cynthia Heimel wrote in 1980 that Romero "is known for making the most grisly, horrifying movies you're ever likely to see." 
 
 Mike Drucker, the standup comedian and "Late Night" jokes writer, credited Romero with "reinventing" zombies, which, since his 1968 creation, have become ubiquitous in movies, films and books. 
 
 Without George Romero, about 1/3 of nerd culture things wouldn't exist. He re-invented zombies and now they seem so obvious. RIP. Damn. — Mike Drucker (@MikeDrucker) July 16, 2017 
 
 World famous horror writer Stephen King called Romero his "favorite collaborator." 
 
 Sad to hear my favorite collaborator--and good old friend--George Romero has died. George, there will never be another like you. — Stephen King (@StephenKing) July 16, 2017 
 
 Romero directed several movies based on King's work, including the "Creepshow" films. 
 
 --CNN's Evan Simko-Bednarski and Lawrence Crook III contributed to this report. 
 
 'Mission: Impossible' star dies at 89 ||||| His low-budget body of work, which included 'Night of the Living Dead' and 'Dawn of the Dead,' creeped out audiences for decades. 
 
 George A. Romero, the legendary writer-director from Pittsburgh who made the 1968 cult classic Night of the Living Dead for $114,000, thus spawning an unrelenting parade of zombie movies and TV shows, has died. He was 77. 
 
 Romero, who put out five other zombie movies after a copyright blunder cost him millions of dollars in profits on his wildly popular first one, died Sunday of lung cancer, his producing partner, Peter Grunwald, told the Los Angeles Times, which first reported the news. Romero's family confirmed his death to the newspaper as well. 
 
 Romero's manager, Chris Roe, posted on Facebook that the director died while "listening to the score of The Quiet Man, one of his all-time favorite films, with his wife, Suzanne Desrocher Romero, and daughter, Tina Romero, at his side. He died peacefully in his sleep following a brief but aggressive battle with lung cancer and leaves behind a loving family, many friends and a filmmaking legacy that has endured, and will continue to endure, the test of time." 
 
 Romero's 1978 sequel Dawn of the Dead was made for $1.5 million and grossed $55 million. He followed that by writing and directing Day of the Dead (1985), Land of the Dead (2005), Diary of the Dead (2007) and Survival of the Dead (2009), a decomposing body of work that earned him the nickname Father of the Zombie Film. 
 
 Romero also penned a new version of Night of the Living Dead, released in 1990, that was directed by Tom Savini, his longtime collaborator and horror effects guru. (And Dawn of the Dead was remade by Zack Snyder in 2004.) 
 
 Some film scholars and horror enthusiasts contend that social commentary — specifically salvos against the military and materialism — lurked within Romero’s films. Most of his work was shot in Pittsburgh, where Romero attended Carnegie Mellon University. 
 
 Night of the Living Dead, the story of seven strangers trapped in a farmhouse besieged by a lynch-mob posse of staggering zombies, devastated/delighted audiences at the time of its release, its stark and grainy black-and-white cinematography imbuing it with a documentary realism. 
 
 Romero and his nine other investors, including co-writer John A. Russo, had cobbled together $6,000 to start production on the film, then titled Night of the Flesh Eaters. It premiered at the Fulton Theater in Pittsburgh on Oct. 1, 1968, and quickly caught on as a staple of midnight screenings around the country. But most of the profits eluded the investors because of a mistake by the distributor. 
 
 "We lost the copyright on the film because we put it on the title," Romero explained in "Night of the Living Steelers," an installment of NFL Films' Timeline series that premiered in October. "Our title was Night of the Flesh Eaters; they changed it to Night of the Living Dead. 
 
 "When they changed the title, the copyright bug came off, so it went into public domain [and] we no longer had a piece of the action. Everybody had a copy of Night of the Living Dead because they were able to sell it without having to worry about royalties going to us." 
 
 Night of the Living Dead was rare for its time in that it featured an African-American actor (Duane Jones) as a hero in a mainstream movie. 
 
 After directing the box-office failures There's Always Vanilla (1971), Hungry Wives (1972) and The Crazies (1973), Romero, looking to make ends meet, produced a series of TV documentaries that focused on such Steeler legends-in-the-making as "Mean" Joe Greene, Franco Harris, Terry Bradshaw and Rocky Bleier. 
 
 He returned to the zombie milieu with Dawn of the Dead (this time with copyright intact), which was filmed at the Monroeville Mall outside Pittsburgh. "This was the first indoor mall we had ever seen," he said in the Timeline documentary. "I said, 'Wow, this is a temple to consumerism. There's my topic.'" 
 
 Once, during an AFI screening of Night of the Living Dead, he was asked what terrified him. "I don’t have any supernatural hobgoblins that I worry about," he said. "What scares me is life." 
 
 George Andrew Romero was born Feb. 4, 1940, in the Bronx. As a teen, he was crazy about movies, especially the Michael Powell-Emeric Pressburger opera fantasy The Tales of Hoffmann (1951). To watch it, he had to rent a movie projector and a print of the film from a movie house in Manhattan. 
 
 "They had one print," he recalled. "Whenever it was gone, I knew the guy who had it. And when that guy came in and it was gone, he knew who had it. And that guy was Marty Scorsese. … We were the only two people who rented Tales of Hoffmann." 
 
 Romero studied art and design at Carnegie Mellon, graduated in 1960 and started a commercial production company, Image Ten Prods. He made a Calgon detergent ad that lampooned the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage and did a segment for the kids show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood that showed the host preparing to have a tonsillectomy. 
 
 All that helped pay for the camera his team used to shoot Night of the Living Dead. Money was tight, so the basement of his company's office on Fort Pitt Boulevard in Pittsburgh doubled as the farmhouse basement in the movie. 
 
 Romero’s other work included Knightriders (1981), a mayhem movie with combatants jousting on motorcycles; Creepshow (1982), modeled after horror comics and scripted by Stephen King; Monkey Shines (1988), a psychological thriller revolving around a killer simian; The Dark Half (1993), where a writer's alter ego aims to take over; and Bruiser (2000), about a man who finds his face transformed into a blank mask. 
 
 Romero also dabbled in the world of comic books with the limited Marvel series Empire of the Dead. 
 
 Glimpses of the man himself can be seen in many of his films, and he had a cameo as an FBI agent in Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs (1991). 
 
 Thanks to Romero, Pittsburgh has been called the "Zombie Capital of the World" and each year hosts an event called Zombie Fest, complete with a brain-eating contest. 
 
 "I used to be the only guy in the playground, I was the only guy doing zombies," he said in the Timeline doc. "Then all of a sudden The Walking Dead happened and it became mainstream. And now they're all over the place." 
 
 Duane Byrge contributed to this report.
– His movies were groundbreaking—and that ground was over a grave. George Romero, the director known as the "Father of the Zombie Film" for 1968's Night of the Living Dead and its follow-ups, died of lung cancer on Sunday, CNN reports. He was 77. Romero, who grew up in the Bronx, used money from directing commercials to make Night of the Living Dead, which, per the BBC, was the "first film to depict cannibalistic reanimated corpses." It made $30 million on a budget of $114,000 and spawned five sequels, including 1978's mall-set Dawn of the Dead, which is widely considered to be one of the best horror movies of all time. Romero also directed non-zombie horror movies, including 1982's Creepshow. Romero spent most of his life in Pittsburgh, which now hosts an annual Zombie Fest and is sometimes called the "Zombie Capital of the World," the Hollywood Reporter notes. The director, who mixed social commentary with the gore, most recently returned to the zombie genre with the Empire of the Dead graphic novel. "I used to be the only guy in the playground, I was the only guy doing zombies," he said in a recent Timeline documentary. "Then all of a sudden The Walking Dead happened and it became mainstream. And now they're all over the place." Family members say he died peacefully, listening to the score from one of his favorite movies: 1952's The Quiet Man.