Throughout his career, George A. Romero proved time and time again that he didn’t need a massive budget to pull off his vision, but he took it to the extreme with Night of the Living Dead. By the time production wrapped on Romero’s directorial debut, the film’s budget ended up being approximately $114,000, per Variety, but when the “Godfather of the Zombie Movie” initially started filming, he had around $6,000.
In a Vice interview a few years before his passing in 2017, Romero explained that he started filming with the initial capital from Image Ten (the film’s production company) and would then show the completed scenes to investors who would donate a few thousand dollars here and there. By the time Image Ten had pulled in enough investors, they had $114,000, which would be $872,000 today.
Article source: https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2573483/night-of-the-living-dead-behind-the-scenes-facts-about-the-george-romero-horror-movie