During a conversation celebrating the 45th anniversary of “Night of the Living Dead” as part of the British Film Institute’s Gothic season, Romero shined a light on the struggles to give “The Crazies” the kind of grand scale he initially envisioned. “Originally I had written it bigger in terms of the script,” explained Romero, “but the finance company wouldn’t do it unrated. They said, ‘We’ll pay to shoot this, but it’s going to cost a little bit too much to risk releasing it without a rating’, so they asked if we could do it for $3 million.”
Source: The Crazies Never Reached The Scope George Romero Had Originally Hoped