In the archive, we discovered the designs for what we believe to be the 1973 Christmas Card from the Latent Image, presumably designed and drawn by George Romero himself. The first image more or less replicates Romero's doodle of a caveman, and then the image presumably designed for the inside of the card is this, with the caveman scampering away after bonking Santa on the head and stealing his hat. 

-Adam Charles Hart

One of George Romero's more beloved creations is Bub from Day of the Dead. Smart enough to learn a few basic tasks, and to grow emotionally attached to the scientist who's teaching him. The earliest materials we have for Day of the Dead were produced all the way back in 1979, when Dawn was still in theaters. That document, a very short synopsis, was likely written to secure the deal that would fund his next three films: Knightriders, Creepshow, and Day. The first longer draft comes from 1982, and it's very different from the finished film.

Night of the Living Dead was developed with the title Night of the Anubis, with its titled changed to Night of the Flesh Eaters during production. Famously, the distributor, the Walter Reade Organization, worried that title was too close to that of the 1964 low-budget horror movie The Flesh Eaters and changed the title to Night of the Living Dead at the last minute.

Back in 1960, just after he turned 20 years old, George Romero had his first major role in a play, Pittsburgh's first production of Jack Gelber's controversial off-Broadway sensation The Connection. The groundbreaking "play with jazz" was about a group of beatniks and jazz musicians waiting around for their heroin connection, and it broke with all sorts of conventions of style and taste. It would become one of the foundations of the modern American theater, helping to redefine what plays could be and what they could do.

In the first draft of Stephen King's screenplay for Pet Sematary - which is, of course, about resurrecting the dead - George Romero's Night of the Living Dead makes an appearance. This first draft, dated November 15, 1984, is unfinished. It was written and originally developed with Romero as the intended director, but unfortunate timing led to the producer moving on from Romero and drafting the great Mary Lambert to create her own iconic version of King's novel.

In the late 1990s, George Romero began exploring the possibility of a TV adaptation of Night of the Living Dead, writing a treatment in 1997 that retold the beginnings of the zombie apocalypse from the perspective of a different cast of characters. In 2004, he adapted that idea to a style and structure modeled on The Blair Witch Project: the series would consist entirely of footage shot within the world of the film, primarily from the cameras of the film students that would be its main characters.

George Romero worked for several years on an adaptation of Stephen King's Pet Sematary, but the timing never worked out. Between post-production on Day of the Dead and the development of Monkey Shines, Romero's schedule conflicted with the various windows of funding/production that opened up. It was, for him as for King, a very personal project that spoke to family and fatherhood in ways that were incredibly meaningful to him.

There are some clearly important, revelatory materials in the Romero archive, but sometimes the most entertaining bits are the ephemera. This utterly delightful doodle, signed by Romero and dated February 7, 1974, reprises a caveman design we've also found in a Latent Image Christmas Card (undated, but presumably December 1973). 

Among the materials for Night of the Living Dead, we found a handwritten sheet of notebook paper with the heading "20 or 25 Cities" at the top. It took us a minute, but we soon figured out what it was: this list would become the crawl at the bottom of the screen during the news broadcast in Night. These are all the safe destinations for survivors in southwest Pennsylvania as the dead begin to rise....

The George A. Romero Archival Collection contains literally hundreds of drafts from unproduced projects, including at least 80 that seem to be unique projects begun by Romero himself or in collaboration with another writer.