How Night of the Living Dead Invented the Zombie Genre

In 1968, a single graphic design blunder accidentally created the modern zombie genre. When the distributor for Night of the Living Dead changed the title from Night of the Flesh Eaters, they made one fatal error: they forgot to include the copyright notice (©) on the new title card. Under 1909 U.S. copyright law, that tiny omission instantly placed George A. Romero’s revolutionary horror masterpiece straight into the public domain. Romero and his team were robbed of millions in rightful profits, but in doing so, the cultural floodgates broke wide open. Anyone could broadcast the film, duplicate VHS tapes, sell merchandise, and most importantly, iterate on Romero’s brand-new "flesh-eating ghoul" formula without fear of litigation. From Italian knockoffs and comic books to Return of the Living Dead, Resident Evil, and The Walking Dead, here is the story of how an administrative slip-up accidentally built a multi-billion-dollar horror empire. Instagram: Instagram.com/SortaStupidSean YouTube:    / @sortastupid   Twitter: Twitter.com/SortaStupidSean Twitch: Twitch.tv/SortaStupidSean #horror #zombies #movie