Inventor of the modern zombie film George A. Romero has died aged 77 following a short battle with lung cancer.

His manager Chris Roe said that he died in his sleep with his family around him, adding that he was listening to the score of The Quiet Man, which was one of his favourite films.

Romero pioneered the zombie film as its own horror genre, with the 1968 film Night Of The Living Dead.

While zombies had appeared on film before, they had been presented as living humans controlled by voodoo.

Romero's depiction of undead corpses proved enduring and influential, and became a vehicle for wry social comment and satire just as much as horror thrills and chills.

On the same day, veteran character actor and Oscar winner Martin Landau died aged 89 after a short hospitalisation.

Landau and Romero had both worked on the classic Cary Grant film North By Northwest , as the following tweet mentions.

When George A. Romero was 19 he worked as a pageboy on NORTH BY NORTHWEST, Martin Landau's 2nd film. #imafuckingnerd

— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) July 17, 2017

Shaun Of The Dead co-creator Edgar Wright has paid tribute to Romero in a blog post, saying that "even if he was pigeonholed somewhat in the genre realm, one of the reasons that his work resonates still is because of fierce intelligence and humour behind it. His zombie films alone are the work of a major satirist, being highly vivid socio-political metaphors".