After years spent trying to get George A. Romero a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, fans of the Night of the Living Dead director are finally getting their wish.
At the age of 76 and three years after Orlando Bloom, the Godfather of the Undead has been bestowed with the dubious honor of paying $30,000 to have his name immortalized in a chintzy terrazzo and brass star on the grungy, gum-spackled sidewalks of Hollywood (note: the requisite funds do not normally come from the celebrity”s own pocket). The decision was announced in a YouTube video that revealed the names of all 972,000 2017 honorees, a list that includes Amy Adams, Jason Bateman, Goldie Hawn, Dwayne Johnson, Chris Pratt, Brett Ratner, Ryan Reynolds, Mark Ruffalo and Rita Wilson (and that”s just on the “film” side).
Romero has been the subject of Walk of Fame talk for awhile now, most notably in 2012 when an Indiegogo campaign spearheaded by the Zombie Research Society failed to get off the ground. The filmmaker made his directorial debut in 1968 with the zombie classic Night of the Living Dead, which kicked off a new wave of undead horror cinema, video games, books and TV that has persisted into the present day with shows like The Walking Dead and films like Zombieland and World War Z. Romero”s last directorial effort was 2009″s Survival of the Dead, the sixth installment of his long-running Living Dead series.
You can watch the announcement of all the 2017 Walk of Fame honorees below.