9 Bizarre Early Drafts That Nearly Destroyed Your Favourite Films

9. Night Of The Living Dead Was About Lonely Teenage Aliens

George Romero's Night Of The Living Dead is one of the most influential horror films of all time. Released in 1968, the film has been cited as influencing everything from television series The Walking Dead to Edgar Wright's Shaun Of The Dead. The film practically established "zombie movie" as a genre, with tons of big name directors still taking a bite out of its financially succulent flesh decades later, including Zack Snyder (who remade Romero's Dawn Of The Dead) and Danny Boyle (who directed the acclaimed 28 Days Later). Imagine, then, if the film hadn't featured zombies at all. In the initial script, co-written by John Russo and Romero himself, the film centred on teenage aliens who travel to Earth in search of...friends. Yeah, Night Of The Living Dead was originally about teenage aliens wanting to befriend boring old teenage humans. In the second iteration of the script, the aliens aren't interested in friendship, but instead travel to our planet in search of delicious human flesh. A better concept than socially awkward, extraterrestrial teenagers, but still a far cry from the iconic film we wound up with. In the end, the cost of incorporating aliens and sci-fi elements was just too high, so they were forced (thankfully) to alter the script to incorporate the undead.