George A. Romero invented the zombie genre with Night of the Living Dead, and now, 40 years later, he's still in the zombie game. Romero, making his return to independently financed horror, is back with Diary of the Dead, a lean and mean Dead flick shot in 20 days on a $2 million budget and set for release on Feb. 15.

The story goes like this: As a group of college filmmakers shoot a mummy film, word spreads over the radio that dead folks are returning to life ... and eating the living. The students hit the road, hoping to outrun and outlast the zombies, all the while filming and then blogging everything they see. SCI FI Weekly recently spoke with Romero about Diary of the Dead, possible future Dead projects and his desire to direct a proper version of Tarzan of the Apes.A lot of fans initially voiced extreme displeasure at the concept of Diary of the Dead. What do you think was behind that?

Romero: I think they thought maybe it was going to be Blair Witch. Maybe they thought it was going to be a bad idea. Maybe it is. I thought we were the first guys. I didn't think Blair Witch was really the same kind of thing at all. Everyone still brings up Blair Witch because of the subjective camera stuff and all that. We were shooting, and meantime we didn't know everyone was doing it. They were out shooting Cloverfield and Redacted. All of a sudden, I think, it's that the whole world has become a camera. And maybe it's that reality TV has become reality movies. I'm not sure exactly why people were disappointed to hear what we were doing, but I'm happy that at least now, since the film has been shown to some audiences, everyone's saying, "Oh, I get it now." It's still quite theatrical. There's a story there. And it ain't Blair Witch. Anyway, we thought we were going to be the first guys doing it, and now about all I can say is I'm part of a trend.Diary of the Dead was independently financed. Why was that important to you, and what do we see on screen that we might not have seen were this movie made within the studio system?

Romero: First of all, Dennis Hopper would have revived and appeared in it if it were a studio film. I don't know, man. It was just all about having the freedom to shoot the script the way I wanted to shoot it. When I did Land of the Dead, Universal actually let me make the movie I wanted to make. I have no complaints at all. They were great, and they let me make the movie, but it was grueling to make. Even though I liked it, I suddenly turned around and said, "Man, this is getting very large. Where do I go from here? We're approaching Thunderdome." What was I going to do next? Beyond the Planet of the Apes, where they're all on horseback? It didn't owe anything or didn't relate at all to its roots, which was a bunch of amateurs who made a little movie. I wanted to get back to that. Even before we shot Land of the Dead I had an idea that I wanted to do something about this emerging alternate media, and I said to myself, "The way to do that is I'll have a bunch of college kids who are film students out shooting a school project, and when the s--t hits the fan they start documenting it." That was just an idea I had, one of those ideas that comes to you in the shower. You're mocking/tweaking the media. You've got some witty jabs at horror films in general and a few at the expense of zombie flicks. How much fun was all that for you?

Romero: Oh man, I just had a ball doing this. However, everyone says, "Hey, it must be so free and easy to just turn the camera on and shoot," and that's not the case. It required, in a way, a lot more discipline than anything I have ever done. There's an eight-page shot, a single shot with no cuts, where they walk into the heroine's house. They walk through the living room, through the dining room into the garage, around the car, back around the car, back into the kitchen. ... The choreography was unbelievable. The stunt guys had to duck under the lens. This guy with the light had to duck under the lens when the camera went past him. It was amazing. It was all planning. That shot, it was the only shot we did that day. We spent six hours setting it up, lighting it, figuring out how to be able to shoot it, and then the rest of the day was just pulling it off and shooting it.Let's talk about some other projects. What's the status of Diamond Dead? Will that ever happen?

Romero: I don't know. I doubt it. I understand there's an item on the Internet again, that evil Internet, that it's back up. I got a call from the producer just a few days ago, and he said, "I have new interest in this, and I'm going to send you a new script." I haven't gotten it yet, because right after that phone call I left home [to hit the road promoting Diary of the Dead], and I'm not going be home for another three weeks. Maybe. Who knows? You just never know. I doubt it. I tend to doubt it.So do you have a next project?

Romero: No, nothing for sure. Now, if we're actually off strike, I can deliver a thing I have been writing on spec. I have a couple of things I'm doing on spec, and one thing that I'm scheduled to write on a fee. And now there's all kind of talk about shooting a sequel to Diary of the Dead, because, as little as it cost, it's already made a lot of money, just based on pre-sales before it even opens. So they're saying, "Well, let's shoot a sequel." I'm trying to find a reason. It would be the first time that I'd do a sequel that is directly a sequel with the same characters. I don't know. I never know. It ain't real until it's real. I have had so many projects announced and then the Internet gets onto it and everyone says, "What happened to Diamond Dead? What happened to ...?" Everyone jumps the gun. I have no idea what I'm going to do next. But I know what I'd like to do.And that would be ... ?

Romero: I have this balls-out comedy zombie thing that I have wanted to do for three years. It's basically the coyote and the roadrunner. It's one human and one zombie. You can do a lot of damage to a zombie and it still lives. So I just had this idea that I'd love to do that as almost a cartoon. That's the one that's closest to my heart, but I don't know if anyone's ever going to get it enough to say, "OK, we'll finance that."You have carved your niche in "thinking man's horror," but is there a non-genre film you're itching to do? Could you picture yourself directing a big-budget romantic comedy for a studio?

Romero: No. The movie that I have always wanted to make, for some obscure, unknown reason, probably because as a kid I grew up [Johnny] with Weissmuller, is Tarzan of the Apes. I'd love to do two things, actually. I'd love to do Tarzan of the Apes the way [Edgar Rice] Burroughs wrote the original book, and I'd love to do [Bram] Stoker's Dracula. A lot of people have claimed, "Here is Stoker's Dracula." It's never been accurate to the novel. Those are the two things I'd love to do. I got close on Dracula. No one is ever even going to talk to me about Tarzan. They're really from my youth. They're childhood dreams. They're not going to happen, but I can dream.