The legendary film/tv producer Gale Anne Hurd, (Terminator, Aliens), spoke with AMC Blogs about the upcoming AMC produced zombie saga The Walking Dead and revealed tons of delicious information.
When Hurd spoke on what attracted her to the ambitious project she makes no bones about being a true fan of the source material and genre in general.
"I have been a longtime fan of the comic. I also love the zombie genre, my zombie fandom going way back to
Night of the Living Dead. And
The Walking Dead is truly the ultimate representation of that sensibility in the comic book genre," she said.
Hurd also talked about the epic scope of the series likening it to a character driven tale of survivability that the comic follows as well - zombies being the backdrop to a larger story revolving around our human bait.
"What's so wonderful about
The Walking Dead is that we're able to explore human nature in its most depraved as well as its most humanitarian in each episode. We strip each character down to their most basic survival instincts -- or lack thereof. It's actually the zombies who are the most predictable: You know what zombies are after," she said, "What you can't anticipate is how one surviving human is going to interact with another. And that's what keeps the series fresh and compelling," said Hurd.
With the recently revealed revolving door of directors brought on board for the 6 episode first season of TWD, Hurd assures us that this situation is not only ok - it's "ideal." "Typically a pilot is shot months in advance, and there's an intervening period during which the cast might lose the cohesiveness they shared while filming the first episode," said Hurd. She went into further detail explaining the shooting schedule and support behind the scenes.
"In our case, the cast worked with Frank (Darabont) for our 14-day pilot shoot and then immediately began work on the next five episodes. In addition, Frank has spent a great deal of time on set, and is always available to us," she said, "Frank's writing is both evocative in setting the tone and feel of each scene and quite specific vis a vis character, so it's pretty easy for our directors to stay on the same page," said Hurd.
The lineup of directors doesn't have me worried at all considering they've worked on some great material consisting of amazing shows like
Breaking Bad,
Dexter and
The Shield.
But our main focus in the end is zombies - in every ugly way possible and Hurd assures us she's a fan of the ghoulish baddies.
"I love them, are you kidding?! I'm a genre girl from way back -- this is my idea of heaven. Yesterday we were all looking at zombie bite tests Greg [Nicotero] created that almost made the videographer throw up, and all I could do was say, "That's awesome, I love it!" I think that anyone who's a fan of the genre or a fan of Robert Kirkman's work will not be disappointed when they see the series," said Hurd.
She also revealed that she's on board for 27 seasons of TWD like series creator Robert Kirkman mentioned before and that if and when season 2 gets greenlit, she'll be the first to sign up for zombie school to get in a cameo as one of the undead herself.
If you're going to be at Comic Con - go to
The Walking Dead panel - footage from the pilot episode will debut there and it promises to blow our minds.
For the full interview hit the link to AMC Blogs and check out the rest of Hurd's interview - she's an amazing producer and her support of this comic adaptation is almost a surefire recipe for success.