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How The Walking Dead is unique in comparisons to other zombie shows

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How The Walking Dead is unique in comparisons to other zombie shows

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The Walking Dead cast on the season 7 premiere

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The Walking Dead cast on the season 7 premiere

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Season 7 of The Walking Dead will have its lighter moments, promises showrunner Scott Gimple, but the resolution of the "Who did Negan kill?" cliffhanger won't be one of 'em.

COMIC-CON 2016 Exclusive Videos, Casting News, Scoop and More

"We spared no drop of awfulness, no iota of misery, no scintilla of pain," Gimple told Michael Ausiello at TVLine's Comic-Con studio presented by ZTE.

Even Negan's portrayer, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, described filming his first two episodes of the AMC smash as "a tough deal."

Yet while no one in the room would answer the question, "Who's here just for show?", Gimple did offer up one of the larger themes in Season 7. "How do they live under the thumb of Negan - and still live?" he previewed. "It isn't all misery, but they want to win back their lives."

RELATED The Walking Dead @ Comic-Con: Season 7 Leading to 'One of the Greatest Showdowns' Since Terminus

Cast members Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira, meanwhile, weighed in on last season's budding love affair between Rick and Michonne - but stayed cryptic about how much of that dynamic will be explored when the show returns. (Heck, neither one would deny that either Rick or Michonne dies within the opening moments of the premiere!)

The Walking Dead returns for Season 7 Sunday, Oct. 23, at 9/8c on AMC.
Press PLAY above for the full video interview, then share your thoughts below!

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The Walking Dead Team Talks Season 7 Premiere: 'It's Very, Very Gruesome'

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Season 7 of The Walking Dead will have its lighter moments, promises showrunner Scott Gimple, but the resolution of the "Who did Negan kill?" cliffhanger won't be one of 'em. COMIC-CON 2016 Exclusive Videos, Casting News, Scoop and More "We spared no drop of awfulness, no iota of misery, no scintilla of pain," Gimple told Michael Ausiello at TVLine's Comic-Con studio presented by ZTE.

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How Negan has become the biggest threat to Rick and the group

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How Negan has become the biggest threat to Rick and the group

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Oh, how the mighty have fallen. So far, The Walking Dead 's seventh season has been all about taking our favorite heroes and knocking them down a peg or five-and its fourth installment, "Service," spends 85 minutes knocking them down even further. There's no doubt that Negan is this group's most formidable foe yet-but is poor leadership making a big problem even worse? More discussion ahead, but first, your usual spoiler warning.

Hoo, boy! To put it bluntly, Rick really screwed the pooch on this one. When Negan came a-knocking at Alexandria's gates earlier than expected, our favorite former sheriff tried to play it cool, but made some really crappy decisions. While Gabriel displayed quick thinking, digging a fake grave to make Negan think Maggie died (more on that later), Rick went ahead and showed Negan every one of the group's cards-before going ahead and handing them all over. No quick thinking, no strategy, no nothing; just deferential decisions made out of sheer fear.

What, exactly, did Rick do wrong? Let's start with the fact that when he and Carl were standing in a room with an unarmed Negan and only two other men, Rick didn't let Carl simply shoot Negan in the face. What, shooting Negan sounds like an awful plan? Think of it this way: Negan's a dictator. His men have only one level of organization; all their orders seem to come from the top, a.k.a. the leather-clad despot himself. Cut off the head of an organization like that, and all of the body parts will be unable to do much more than flail around like, well, you know.

By showing up in Alexandria for a tour, Negan planted himself away from home base with a limited number of men to back him up. As every sports fan knows, away games are always harder to win than home games-and after they arrived, Negan's men dispersed across Alexandria, a place they've never entered before. If Rick had thought this through as they braced for Negan's arrival, he'd have ordered everyone capable of taking Negan out to do so if they had the chance-Carl included. It's hard to say whether Negan's men would even really bother avenging him-after all, they all joined his ranks under duress, and some pretty brutal circumstances. But even if they did, they would likely be poorly organized and relatively easy to defeat-even despite their superior numbers.

So, why didn't Rick signal Carl to turn the gun on Negan-with Negan unarmed and one of his henchmen merely holding a crate, while Rick had a bat and Carl had a gun? Well, the obvious reason is that he's this season's big bad guy, and after more than a year of build-up, The Walking Dead certainly can't kill him off after just a few episodes. (Especially given the fact he's being played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan.) But what's the in-show explanation for Rick turning down all those shots to take Negan down? It's a pretty convincing one: Looks like he was simply too terrified of Negan to think tactically and take them. Case in point: that moment when Negan was dispatching a walker with a candlestick, and Rick stood glowering behind him, white-knuckling Lucille.

Look, I get it. Negan's the first big-bad to really get under Rick's skin-first by killing off two of his closest friends, then by stopping just shy of making him cut off his own son's hand. That would rattle just about anyone. But it's also worth remembering that Rick's actually been a pretty crappy leader for a long time. Looking back at his legacy of authoritarianism and poor decision-making, it's hard to blame Spencer when he snaps at Rick and calls him out for the consequences of his decisions. Now that Negan's shown his full strength, Rick has crumbled into a poor excuse for a leader. Luckily, The Walking Dead has been quietly developing several potential successors for a long time. And one of them, Michonne, seems increasingly primed to step up to the plate.

It's not insignificant that when they arrived in Alexandria, Michonne and Rick were both appointed constables. And when Rick went bananas in the streets, ranting and raving? Michonne was the one who knocked him out. As she spoke with Deanna about her vision for what Alexandria could be, and about finding what survival meant to her, Michonne's hinted potential only gleamed brighter. Now, with Rick completely broken, it could be her time to take the reigns. From what we see in this episode, she's far from ready to bow down to Negan just yet.

Michonne spends most of the episode out in an open field, practicing her marksmanship with a rifle. (Her weapon of choice, a katana, is far less useful for long-range combat than a gun.) But when she returns to Alexandria, Rick demands she hand over the gun so he can give it to Negan. The gun wasn't in the town's inventory, so Negan would never have known they had it. But Rick decided to barter it away for trust-and, hopefully, enough brownie points to convince Negan to leave Daryl with them. Never mind that Negan already seized every last gun they had-or that, so far, he hasn't exactly proven capable of being talked into anything he doesn't feel like doing. Naturally, this did not pan out; Negan took the rifle, and Rick was left empty-handed.

Luckily, another of the show's badass women-Rosita-is just as unafraid as Michonne, and has already started frisking walkers for guns they can hoard in secret. Honestly, were it not for the women on this show, there would be little to no good judgment left-which brings us to one final note about this episode: the glaring absence of Sasha and Maggie. For three episodes in a row now, the show has kept the lens off the two characters viewers might want to hear from most. They did both just lose their beloveds, after all. It seems that from its cliff-hanger beginning to the very end, this season will be all about the suspense. Let's just hope it isn't too long before we venture over to Hilltop to see how these two are doing. Maggie was in pretty dire but determined shape when we last saw her, after all. If we had to guess, she and Sasha have already got just as many tricks up their sleeve as Michonne, Rosita, and Carol do-if not a few more.

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SEASON FOUR: With an ominous virus plaguing the prison, Glenn falls ill, leading to a scene where Maggie finds a blood-gurgling and barely conscious Glenn. He's eventually saved by a Hershel-meets- House M.D. moment.

SEASON 4: When Maggie and Glenn are separated after escaping the prison, The Walking Dead tries to fool us into thinking that Maggiehad discovered a dead Glenn in a school bus full of the infected. Turns out it was just any old dark-haired zombie, and Glenn was actually still at the prison, alive and king of the walker-infested hill.

SEASON 6: After following Nicholas outside Alexandria's presumably safe borders, Glenn gets shot right in the shoulder, is almost beaten to death by Nicholas and eaten alive by a walker . . . but still he survives. You'd think Glenn would seek true Walking Dead justice by finishing off Nicholas, but he allows Saint Nick to go on a path of redemption, which never really ended up working in Glenn's favor.

So where does this leave us? Though there's some [murmuring] (http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/11/walking-dead-negan-jeffrey-dean-morgan-glenn-lives) going on that Glenn's continuous revivals may be running out of luck, we will continue to hope for the best. Keep on, keeping on, Glenn. (We also deserve one more guitar performance from you at the very least.)

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The Walking Dead: Has Negan Broken Rick for Good?

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Oh, how the mighty have fallen. So far, The Walking Dead 's seventh season has been all about taking our favorite heroes and knocking them down a peg or five-and its fourth installment, "Service," spends 85 minutes knocking them down even further.

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Interesting facts about The Walking Dead

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Interesting facts about The Walking Dead

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The Walking Dead has gone from a black and white comic book to a majorly successful TV series. Who wouldve thought? Flesh-craving zombies, fighting for survival, crazy plot twists, hated characters, and nail-biting cliffhangers, are just some of the things that make The Walking Dead worth watching.

The show now has millions of fans and viewers, waiting eagerly to see what becomes of their favourite characters and how the story unfolds.

Here are some interesting fun facts about the show:

Source can be found at the bottom of the article.

1/15. All of the principal actors have a "Last Supper" the day they film their death scenes.

2/15. From season to season, the opening titles, and the walkers, "decompose" more and more to show elapsed time.

3/15. No one knows exactly how the virus started or how it is contracted. One theory is that it is not actually contagious, but everyone already has it. When a person dies, they will reanimate as a walker, regardless of how they were killed.

Continue reading on the next page.

4/15. Among the common nicknames for the Walking dead that are shared in different groups, are "Walkers", "Lamebrains", "Biters", "Rotters", "Lurkers", "Roamers", "Geeks". The term "Zombie" has never used throughout the course of the series.

5/15. During lunch breaks, the zombie cast would eat together while the human cast ate together.

6/15. You can buy the same Horton Scout HD 25 Crossbow that Daryl uses on the show at your local Walmart or online for $320.84.

7/15. In an interview on National Public Radio, Steven Yeun (Glenn) said that his parents (who emigrated from Korea as adults) watch the show faithfully but do not always understand the nuances of the English used in it, so they get a bootlegged version with Korean subtitles. Yuen also said that his father once asked him to thank Melissa McBride for saving his life. Even though Yeun reminded his father that it was all make-believe, Mr. Yuen insisted that his son should thank her, which he then did.

Continue reading on the next page.

8/15. In the comics, Glenn and Maggie end up adopting Sophia, who is Carol's (Melissa McBride) daughter.

9/15. Hershel was the groups moral compass, and created a safe haven for Rick and his group on his farm. Hershel is no longer on the show, (the character was decapitated by the Governor) but he didnt say goodbye to the show without a keepsake. He walked away with his fake severed head, and kept it as a mantle piece.

10/15. During an interview, Robert Kirkman claimed Norman Reedus (Daryl) originally auditioned for the part of Merle Dixon. He was rejected, but his audition so intrigued the show-runners that they created the part of Daryl just for him.

Continue reading on the next page.

11/15. In season 2, Beth is 17 years old. In reality, Emily Kinney was 25 years old when she joined the cast.

12/15. The walkers have a very loud and unique sound that is a mixture of a growl and groan. However, the walkers are actually absolutely silent during the production. The noises you hear from the walkers are added in post-production. They are also instructed to move like they are leaving a bar at 2 AM.

13/15. The leading character Rick Grimes is from the fictitious King County, Georgia, which is named in honor of Stephen King.

14/15. The name Edwin Jenner, the doctor at the CDC, is a reference to Edward Jenner who developed the first vaccine (which was for smallpox).

15/15. The character who is referred to as the Governor had a stash of 24 heads he stored in tanks. To give them that extra creepy look, they were stained yellow using coffee grounds and tea.

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15 Mind Blowing Facts About The Walking Dead.

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The Walking Dead has gone from a black and white comic book to a majorly successful TV series. Who wouldve thought? Flesh-craving zombies, fighting for survival, crazy plot twists, hated characters, and nail-biting cliffhangers, are just some of the things that make The Walking Dead worth watching.

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Negan's introduction showing everyone who's boss

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Negan's introduction showing everyone who's boss

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The Walking Dead 6x16 Negans Introduction- Rick Meets Negan

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Director Greg Nicotero on alternate versions of the direction the show would go in

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Director Greg Nicotero on alternate versions of the direction the show would go in

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[SPOILER ALERT: Read on only if you have already watched Sunday's season 6 premiere of The Walking Dead, "First Time Again."]
The Walking Dead continued to go big in its season 6 premiere. From the big scale of having 300 zombie extras and thousands more digitally added in, to the big problems facing Alexandria, to the big risk of airing half of the episode in black and white. But as executive producer and director Greg Nicotero tells us, that last part was not the original plan. Team TWD had another bold vision in mind on how to differentiate their scenes from past and present, but eventually scrapped it and came up with the black and white idea in post-production.

What was the original format and will we ever see it? Nicotero talks about that in our premiere deep dive, while also revealing the mishap that led to a blood-streaming geyser, why Andrew Lincoln punched a hole in the wall before a take, and another moment that did not make the final cut. (Read through all three pages for the entire interview. Also make sure to check out our premiere Q&A's with Andrew Lincoln, Robert Kirkman, and Ethan Embry, as well as our exclusive storyboards from Nicotero.)
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: The size and scope of this episode is really unlike anything you all have done before. What was the hardest thing for you to execute as the director on this one?
GREG NICOTERO: I think the action set pieces were constantly going bigger and bigger. One of the things I like about the episode is it's a culmination of a lot of past episodes in regards to we're setting the ship out to sea, so we can sort of establish where our characters are, much like the season 4 premiere, which was the escape from Terminus and was a big action sequence. So this has a little bit of both, and the script is fantastic. Scott Gimple and Matt Negrete wrote a great script. We love playing with the timeline shift a little bit.

But for me, I think the hardest part was just visualizing all these big, giant crowd sequences with the walkers. I had directed a pilot last year, and the best thing about my job is you're constantly learning. You're evolving as an artist and I feel like the result of the pilot that I had directed last year and other Walking Dead episodes really made me want to push the envelope on this and make the shots bigger. Alexandria's a little island, and the whole point of this episode was to show this island in the middle of the sea of this new world, and that the world has the potential threat of walkers and humans and whatever, but we really wanted to make sure that we didn't feel claustrophobic inside Alexandria and felt like, "Oh we're in the same location all the time." So we made the world bigger. So that last shot, the drone shot where the camera goes up and up and up and just keeps going, and we see thousands of walkers on the street - we're trying to expand our world. And it was challenging. It was really hard and it was a bit gut-wrenching, but I'm really proud of it.
You said drone shot. You used a drone for that shot?
We did, we used a drone in a couple of the episodes. We had one day where we just shot a bunch of drone stuff and it was like flybys of Daryl's motorcycle and really cool really fun stuff that we had never done on the show before. So it's always trying to just keep it fresh and keep it feeling different.
You've got a double challenge for this massive rock quarry scene. As a zombie make-up guru, you had to prep hundreds of walkers, and then as a director you have to film a scene that for some shots is going to turn those hundreds into thousands. How did you approach those shots?
It's like a Rubik's Cube because you shoot the element of Rick and Morgan on the edge of the quarry, and then you are looking into a real quarry, but the quarry's empty, and you're like, "Okay, that side's not really there, and the back's going to be much further back." I always storyboard those sequences - not so much for me - because I visualize everything the minute I read the script, but to help the other actors and the other artists and the camera department get a sense of what we're going to do.

So when you look at the storyboards and then you look at the final shots, they're almost identical from the moment that we set out planning that shot, and it's because we want people to understand: There are 30,000 or so, whatever the number is, of walkers in there. But on set, they're standing on the edge of an empty quarry and there's nothing there. And then the reverse was shot on a completely different location. So we shot one set of angles in one place and the other set of angles we used this sheer cliff wall to shoot up against, and that was challenging because Mike Satrazemis, our director of photography, and I had a Technocrane on the edge of the quarry with the arm pushed out over the edge and the camera turned back towards us. So we were getting these great sweeping shots up the quarry, and when the walkers go out and fall over, all those locations were practical, we just added the CG zombies going over the cliff.
We have to talk about the zombie with flesh ripping off as he squeezes between trucks. That was super disgusting, man, and I know you take that as a compliment.
I do, indeed. That was the first walker that you really see clearly in the episode, and it was all rigged. There was an air bladder underneath to push the ribs out so that the ribs would pop out. We had a piece of monofilament pulling the guts out. The silicone prosthetic - I mean, it was all rigged to do that. I think digitally we may have closed up the chin a little bit so that it looked like it popped, but that was 99% practical prosthetic.
You've been doing this for so long, Greg. How exciting is it for you when you can come up with something a little bit new or different that we haven't seen before like that?
Any effect that I design and any gag that I come up with, I'm going to make sure that it doesn't feel like something we've seen before. I would never want to repeat something, "Oh they did this in a different movie and we've seen that before." We'll always take it to a different place. I think especially with Scott and the writers, they will make an effort to come up with something interesting. There's a gag in one of the episodes this season where the script said, "And there's a van turned on its side and there's a walker underneath." We were talking in the concept meeting, and I said, "What if the walker was wrapped up in the wheel well, like it had gotten run over?" So we cut a hole in this little van and then we had 20 feet of intestines wrapped around the axle, and we hired a contortionist to put her body inside there. It was just one of those things where you're standing on set and you're like, "God, I love this job. This is so much fun." So we always have the kind of kernel of an idea there, and it's really my job to kind of take everything and elevate it to a place that hasn't been seen before.
Were there any tribute zombies in this episode. Sometimes you do that, sometimes you don't. Anyone here?
You know, I realized at the end of the day that I hadn't put one in. And here's the bummer, and I'm kicking myself. We did a tribute walker in another episode that the scene ended up getting cut out, and I thought "Ah, you know, it's kind of a bummer," but it was a walker from a black and white movie, and it would have been perfect in this episode. but I didn't think about it at the time. But that's all I'm going to say because that walker might show up someplace else. But in my other episodes, there's definitely a couple little tribute guys in there.

NEXT PAGE: The original plan for the episode before they changed the flashbacks to black & white[pagebreak]
Obviously, the other big thing we have going on here in this episode is you're going back and forth between time periods. There's the present and what's happened in the events leading up to it, and we see the past events in black and white. I know you guys didn't originally shoot it that way, but then at some point decided it's going to make it a clearer read going back and forth. Tell me about the decision to go to that black and white, and how it sort of changed the perspective for you guys on that episode.
We always knew there was gonna be a visual cue. When we shot it, I think Scott and I had talked about the idea that it was probably gonna be desaturated flashbacks, and then oversaturated present. Every sequence that takes place in present-day is very action-packed. The camera's always moving, very fast-paced, people are running, people are screaming, people are firing guns. So in the first version of the episode, we had oversaturated the present day and desaturated the past. The trick was when we did it, we looked at it, and it looked like The Wizard of Oz. Our world is not oversaturated, our show is not oversaturated. So when you saw the really vibrant greens of the forest, it made the world look too alive. First thing we noticed when we looked at it was, "Wow, the zombies, they don't look dead anymore," because now that pale color has been accentuated.
Was it almost a little too cartoon-y or something?
It just was vibrant and alive, and the whole point is our show has that little blue cast to it to make it feel like the world is desaturated. So as soon as we looked at it we knew there was gonna be a visual cue. This was actually Scott's idea. It was kind of like back on like Hunt for Red October when Sean Connery is speaking Russian and then the camera just zooms in and he starts speaking English, and the camera zooms back out again. It was a nice transition, so in the opening shot when Rick pulls the gun and shoots Pete, and the color drains out, it was kind of like that idea. It works perfectly.

I'm interested and hopeful that when we do the DVD there will be an all-color version because I think our audience is savvy enough to put those pieces together, and put those clues together, and that was always what I was hoping for. The visual effects in color are breathtaking. The zombie stuff in color is really breathtaking. When you take the color away, the quarry looks very monochromatic, but when the color is there, you really see the differentiation between the walkers and the truck and the quarry walls. So I've been pushing Scott to put a color version of the episode on the DVD because it has a different flavor.
Well, we saw a black and white version of the pilot, so it would be cool to see this alternate version as well.
The black and white also does harken back to the graphic novel, and I think that's why those black and white flashbacks work. It's funny, because a lot of the actors that just saw the episode hadn't seen it yet because we literally just finished it. So some of them it took them a minute - because this is something we've never done before - so it was a very bold move.
Poor Carter gets his face bitten off. Talk about how you wanted to approach that death scene.
It's funny because I'd worked with Ethan once before on Masters of Horror. He was in one of the episodes. He's a really good actor. He came, he landed with the right attitude, the right level of excitement. And of course the day we had to kill him, Andy pulled me aside and goes, "You know this guy's a real talent, we should probably keep him around." I was like, "You know we're shooting his death scene, like, right now!" But he came up to KNB in Los Angeles, we did a face cast of him. He hadn't even read the script yet.

So the idea was we had a cheek prosthetic and then a blood tube that went up. There was one that my guys hooked up to a fire extinguisher, and there was one take where there was a little too much pressure on the fire extinguisher, and it was literally a fire hose of blood shooting right out of his cheek, and the walker was doused. It was like Carrie and Brian De Palma. He was covered head to toe in blood. And the trigger may have stuck or something, but it was almost 20 seconds of just fire hose coming out of his cheek.
That's what you need on the DVD!
That outtake, we watched it for a month afterwards and every time we watched it we just laughed.
That's amazing. I spoke to Ethan and he said that you made him scream a few different ways, one where he's trying to keep it together somewhat and another where he's just lost it.
And that was a really important moment. That sequence, we shot in two locations. So we shot part of it in one place. The idea was, schedule-wise, we would shoot the lead-up and the aftermath in one location, and then we would save the actual physical tearing of the flesh as a second unit insert, because we had so little time to shoot this episode that we saved that piece. And when we actually did the piece where the cheek rips off, he hit the ground and he just had this weird kind of crazy look in his eye, and the blood just started filling up where his eye was, and it was just so powerful that we kept rolling.

And Andy was like, "Let's keep going, let's keep going." And it was just that look of terror and fear in his eyes, because when Rick kills him, it's not malicious. Rick's doing it for two reasons. Number one is because he's attracting walkers, and number two is that clearly he needs to put him out of his misery. But it's a really intense moment, because Morgan and Michonne walk up and see it, and they're just looking at him. And in the scene before that he says, "Well, not all of them are going to make it." That's fine with me as long as my people make it.
One of my favorite elements of the premiere is the relationship between Glenn and Nicholas. These guys literally almost killed each other last season and now Glenn has taken it upon himself to both supervise and train this guy that at one point left him to die, and at another point tried to shoot him dead. Where is this thing heading with these two?
It's a great story the two of them have, because yeah, Glenn doesn't tell everybody what he did, so it's basically between the two of them. He told Maggie, and then there's that scene where talks to Tara, but it's interesting because it's all about Glenn's transformation into a Hershel-like personality. Glenn has forgiveness in his heart, and he wants the people in Alexandria to be able to hold their own, clearly more so than Rick does. But I think with Glenn, he's giving the guy a chance, but he's like, "Listen, if you screw up, I'm not going to be there to help you. You have to take care of yourself. But I'm giving you this opportunity to become a better person, and to become the kind of person that we need in this community."

It's not just about surviving day to day. The theme for this season really is about living. It's about tomorrow. It's about next week. It's about next month. And the desperation that Rick feels to find a place where people can live, not just survive, and that's clearly what sent him off the deep end at the end of last season, and then now he's like, "Listen, if we survive, great. If they die, meh. It's not such a big deal. Don't worry about it."

NEXT PAGE: Why Andy Lincoln punched a hole in the wall and the other moment that didn't make the final cut[pagebreak]
You have some scenes here, like the one where Rick has the gun on Carter and gives the speech about "You really think you're going to take this community from us?" that are straight from the comic book. When you are shooting something ripped from the pages, do you use the comic as a storyboard of sorts and try to match those panels?
Sure. Ever since episode 409 - when they leave the prison and it was the Rick and Carl episode where they were in the house alone and we thought that Rick was dead - I like going back to the source material to harken back to certain images and certain frames. So this one, I think it was more about the delivery. And I even remember when we did a take, Andy had said, "Do I have to list off everybody's names?" Because he's like, "You think you're going to take this place form Daryl? From Glenn? From Michonne? From me?" And Andy said, "I want to try one where I don't list everybody's names off." Because sometimes in the scripts, it feels like you're just doing a role call of reminding the audience who's around.

I said, "Well, listen, the intent is that you're building to a point, and you're building the point by getting the other people that are in your group and reminding him of the strength and the power that your group has. So don't screw with him, because he's got Daryl and Glenn and Michonne at his side. It's not just throwing out Rick. If he throws out Rick, he'd have to throw them all out, and that would never happen." So going back to the comic book, that was the intent of the line in the comic book, was basically for Rick to say, "I have these fighters and these survivors with me and there's no way you're going to be able to remove us from here, because we're stronger than you are."
Yeah, it's a great scene.
Wait, there's a great blooper I have to tell you about. When we shot the scene with Rick and Ethan, Andy was getting into character and he punched the wall, just sort of getting his blood up before he pulls a gun. And he put his hand through the wall. And the blooper is so funny, because you can hear me in the background. He goes from being Rick Grimes to being Andy Lincoln for a split second and goes, "Uh-oh. Is that in the shot?" And you can hear me in the background going, "Yes, the hole in the wall is clearly in the shot." It was right next to his head. But it's funny in those last 10 seconds before you say "Action" and they transform into those characters. So there's a very funny moment where he punches the hole in the wall and then just goes from Rick Grimes to Andy Lincoln going, "Oops."
Speaking of humor, you have this moment where we meet Heath, and Eugene says to him, "I fully respect the hair game." How do you all employ comedy on this show, because there's not a lot of it, but you do have moments here and there where you can have a little fun like with this or Daryl's "You look ridiculous" line from last season.
The "you look ridiculous" was an ad lib that Norman threw in at the end when Melissa walked past him. It was so ludicrous when we were shooting it, but you have to balance it. The show can't be so bleak that it's completely devoid of humor. It can't be. I saw Josh on the street five minutes ago, and he's not Eugene, but transforms into Eugene on set, and his whole affect changes. You can't not laugh, because he's such a great character, and the scene that I shot in the finale where the look that he gives Cudlitz when Christian pushes the tray over in the infirmary and goes, "Oops," and then just looks over and there's Josh looking at Michael - I had to literally pinch myself from laughing the entire time.

So it's important that we have those comedy moments, and Josh is so good at them. But there's another funny moment too when Morgan says to Michonne, "Did you steal my candy bar?" And when we shot that scene I actually let the comedy play even bigger, because at the end of the scene, Michonne walks away and leaves Rick standing there. And Morgan's like, "Hmmm, I know she took it, but she says she didn't." And he looks over at Rick, and Rick just sort of gives him a look and a double take and walks away like, "I'm not getting in the middle of this." And I laughed out loud, because we don't let those moments of comedy play.

Sadly, I don't think that last little look made it into the episode, but it was something where we were shooting it, I put it in the cut, because I was like, "I think it was great," but just time-wise we had to trim it. But again, we should do the comedy version. We should do an episode where they're being chased by walkers, they go into a comedy club and then Glenn goes, "You know, I dabbled at stand-up comedy before the apocalypse," and then they each do a set.
Open mic night. Alright, Greg, we're one episode down, we got 15 to go. What can people expect coming up?
I can tell you that the level of intensity and the epic scale of the show will not end with just the first episode. We continue to have big, giant, almost unproducable episodes week after week after week, because they were so huge. It's not going to be like, "Oh, yeah, well they came out of the gate swinging and now they're going to take a breather." You're not going to catch your breath in this season at all. It's just completely relentless week after week.
Make sure to also check out our finale Q&As with Andrew Lincoln, Robert Kirkman, and Ethan Embry, as well as our exclusive storyboards from Nicotero. Also click on our video below to watch the cast members reveal who that they think would die first in a real zombie apocalypse. And for more 'Walking Dead' scoop, follow Dalton on Twitter @DaltonRoss.

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'The Walking Dead' director Greg Nicotero on the alternate version of the premiere you DIDN'T see

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SPOILER ALERT: Read on only if you have already watched Sunday's season 6 premiere of The Walking Dead, "First Time Again."] The Walking Dead continued to go big in its season 6 premiere.

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A general idea of the demographics of the show

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A general idea of the demographics of the show

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Genre and Target Audience The Walking Dead

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Genre and Target Audience The Walking Dead

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Researchers studying the first three seasons of the AMC hit show The Walking Dead found the show and its characters push family as the best hope for the end times, rather than government, science or religion, and this redefinition of the zombie genre can help explain how the show has amassed its 14-million-per-episode fan base.

"'Family,' according to The Walking Dead, matters most at the end of the day -- and at the end of the world. Government and its science programs cannot save us," according to a study by Joshua Ambrosius, assistant political science professor, and Joseph Valenzano III, communication professor. Their article "People in Hell Want Slurpees: The Redefinition of the Zombie Genre through the Salvific Portrayal of Family on AMC's The Walking Dead" is published in Communication Monographs.

The Walking Dead, which recently completed its fifth season and currently is the most-watched cable television show, is about a group of survivors enduring a zombie apocalypse in the American South. Ambrosius and Valenzano watched all 35 episodes of The Walking Dead's first three seasons twice and documented references to four social institutions that appear prominently in the show: science, religion, government and family.

They found, rather than supporting the traditional 'leftist and subversive' critique of capitalism, individualism and Western society, the show displays a shift within the zombie genre that now prioritizes family as the central societal institution. The pair discovered the show presents but discredits science, religion and government as sources of salvation -- just as the American public today is demonstrating less confidence in scientific, religious and political institutions.

In addition to the importance of family, Ambrosius and Valenzano also found The Walking Dead embraces alternative definitions of family other than the traditional nuclear family.

"Despite some Americans today trying to live as a 'family of one,' this option becomes increasingly difficult after the apocalypse. Characters who lose loved ones quickly learn they must find a new family or risk the fate of the 'walkers,'" according to Ambrosius and Valenzano.

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relationships; social psychology; stress; parenting; ocean policy; poverty and learning; surveillance; political science

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Zombie family values: The Walking Dead TV program analyzed

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Researchers studying the first three seasons of the AMC hit show The Walking Dead found the show and its characters push family as the best hope for the end times, rather than government, science or religion, and this redefinition of the zombie genre can help explain how the show has amassed its 14-million-per-episode fan base.

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An article with video explaining how the directors differ the plotline from the comics

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An article with video explaining how the directors differ the plotline from the comics

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Spoiler alert for anyone who isn't caught up on The Walking Dead, with some general comic info also coming up.

To many, this season of The Walking Dead may feel like a revision of the front half of Season 6, with its honed-in focus on specific characters and settings. But the central narrative's expansion in Season 7 is for a greater purpose, as Alexandria, The Kingdom and the Hilltop Colony are all meant to come together as one in the fight against Negan familiarly known as the "All-Out War." At least that's how it went in Robert Kirkman's comic book. But according to showrunner Scott Gimple, TV audiences might not get to see that particular storyline play out in the same way.

This could be a huge departure from the book. This could be it. There might not be a rebellion. I wouldn't want to say that there absolutely will be one, but I would also say it's not a crazy thing to posit that. As far as anything that could possibly move him towards that, if that even were to happen, this is definitely a wait and see.

The TV show is currently deep in the "March to War" comic book arc, which was all about bringing in new and memorable characters, as well as deepening Negan's character development through his vicious tyranny. Both of those things have been happening in live-action, so it should only make sense that delegates from all three protagonist locations - namely Rick, Ezekiel and Jesus - would come together in a grand effort to topple Negan's throne. But if Scott Gimple is serious about switching things around with the eventual "war," that could be one of the biggest page-to-screen changes we've seen so far.

There are good reasons why a decision like that would be made. One, after years of slowly moving through the first chunk of the comics, The Walking Dead hastily plowed through Negan's build-up on the way to the cliffhanger in last season's finale, so expanding and stretching the "March to War" effort could be a way to re-balance the pacing. (It wouldn't be good for anyone if the TV show caught up to the comic storyline by Season 8.) As well, we only just met Negan, so it would be kind of shitty to bring in the "War" efforts so early in his run, unless an entire season is devoted to it. He's easily the best villain in The Walking Dead, so Negan's presence needs to be as powerful as possible, for as long as possible.

As far as how the show will slow down its pre-War shambling, Scott Gimple further explained to ComicBook.com that while the AMC drama will definitely still be using what's in the comics as its foundation, they will continue to freshen things up as such.

That said, accentuating it in places and extrapolating things that are maybe even just mentioned in the book, playing them out even more fully, and then taking different elements from the book and sort of assigning them to different places really just to bring about some of the feelings and reactions I had when I initially read the book.

We have definitely seen Walking Dead fans go berserk over changes made to the source material in the past, and last Sunday's episode featured its own remixing by putting Jesus with Carl on the Sanctuary recon mission. But for some fans, merely teasing any major alterations to the comic series' All-Out War storyline is tantamount to fictional treason. After all, the "Rick vs. Negan" element is what has made The Walking Dead's issues post-#100 so thrilling and addictive, and delaying that or watering it down in any way will surely earn the creative team some harsh words. Not that Gimple & Co. haven't gotten used to outspoken viewers.

With a war possibly on the way or possibly not, The Walking Dead airs Sunday nights on AMC. Check out our fall TV schedule and our midseason premiere schedule to see all the things coming your way on the small screen.

Blended From Around The Web

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One Huge Way The Walking Dead May Be Shifting Its Plotline From The Comics

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Spoiler alert for anyone who isn't caught up on The Walking Dead, with some general comic info also coming up. To many, this season of The Walking Dead may feel like a revision of the front half of Season 6, with its honed-in focus on specific characters and settings.

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How the zombie genre as a whole can be seen as a metaphor for the social classes

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How the zombie genre as a whole can be seen as a metaphor for the social classes

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A look at how The Walking Dead changed zombie pop culture

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A look at how The Walking Dead changed zombie pop culture

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Before 2010, when you asked someone what they thought of when they heard the word " zombie," chances are they'd throw out a handful of movie titles including Night of the Living Dead or Dawn of the Dead. If he or she was a film buff, they might even mention George Romero by name. The point remains: There was a time when The Walking Dead wasn't the most famous zombie pop culture artifact. And for better or worse, those days are gone. Since AMC introduced the series - now in its seventh season - it's become a one-of-a-kind juggernaut franchise, one that draws millions each week.

While fans of The Walking Dead are happy to sing its praises and celebrate its success, Robert Kirkman's zombie hit does have its share of detractors; and Romero himself is among them. In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he was candid about his prognosis for the zombie genre - and it wasn't great. "The Dead are everywhere these days," he said. " The Walking Dead and Brad Pitt just sort of killed it all."

According to Romero, the new wave of zombie-themed films and TV shows favor gore over substance, while he always tried to fill his films with a deeper meaning. When asked about the prospect of picking up his own franchise, he was also firm. "I'm content to wait until sort of zombies die off."

There's no denying that the undead have played a prominent role in many facets of our entertainment as of late, but has The Walking Dead effectively killed its own genre? We're not so sure.

We were zombie-aware long before The Walking Dead

Part of Romero's problem with The Walking Dead, World War Z, and the recent outcropping of zombie-related stories seems to be that there's a bit of over-exposure at play. And to that point, he's not wrong - since the early 2000s, there have been dozens of films and shows, after all. But that didn't start with the two pieces that Romero called out - in fact, in many ways, The Walking Dead and World War Z borrowed heavily from other works that helped redefine the genre.

Danny Boyle's tremendous and terrifying 28 Days Later introduced the world to the concept of a high-speed zombie in 2003. Romero attributed that particular evolution to Pitt's 2013 thriller, though. And The Walking Dead is also eerily similar to 28 Days Later - in fact, Rick's awakening in a hospital bed and encountering a suddenly apocalyptic world almost feels lifted entirely from a sequence in Boyle's film.

In that way, it's hard to pin all the blame for any potential over zombification as of late on The Walking Dead. Yes, it's taken the interest in the genre to another level - but it also relied heavily on previously established themes and an already built-in interest to get there. Besides, as fans of The Walking Dead know, the interest in the series isn't just because of the zombies, anyway.

The Walking Dead has changed our expectations - but that's not all bad

In his critique of The Walking Dead's role in ruining the zombie genre, Romero insinuated that the series relies on gore alone to draw in viewers. But to Romero's point, The Walking Dead isn't entirely devoid of a message. It may get lost within the series' narrative, but it's been there all along: The real danger to humanity isn't some kind of unimaginable monster, it's ourselves.

Is this message original to the genre? No - in fact, it borrows from the Night of the Living Dead series directly. Has The Walking Dead always managed to send that message home effectively? No - but that doesn't mean it's missing a message entirely.

Romero isn't the only person to make this critique of the series. As of late, fans and critics alike have complained that the series has become too focused on blood and guts. However, that hasn't always been the case. For the better part of six seasons, The Walking Dead walked a fine line between shock value violence and storytelling. And it's introduced a new generation of fans to the genre by focusing on characters that they're genuinely invested in. By investing so heavily in the show's characters, Kirkman and company have perhaps shifted viewers' expectations of what they'll see in a zombie story - but in this respect, that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

The issue isn't zombies - it's overexposure

There's one thing that Romero is definitely right about - zombies are everywhere these days. We can't say definitively whether or not that's due to The Walking Dead's popularity, but we can say that if there's a bigger issue with the genre in general, it's in the sheer amount of zombie-related content out there these days. As with anything that becomes a genre du jour, it has bordered on becoming a gimmick.

Part of what made Romero's films work so well was that they were original and fresh. Films like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse have tried and failed to continue what Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead started - refreshing the genre by subverting it. We've become so used to seeing the undead that the concept in and of itself doesn't scare us anymore; and that has nothing to do with one story or another, but with the entire genre reaching a zenith. Yes, The Walking Dead has played a part in that - but it's not the only reason that we've reached peak zombie exposure.
Follow Katherine Webb on Twitter @prufrox.

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Did 'The Walking Dead' Kill the Zombie Genre?

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Before 2010, when you asked someone what they thought of when they heard the word " zombie," chances are they'd throw out a handful of movie titles including Night of the Living Dead or Dawn of the Dead. If he or she was a film buff, they might even mention George Romero by name.

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The original threat to the main characters

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The original threat to the main characters

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My take on the genre change of The Walking Dead

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My take on the genre change of The Walking Dead