Bringing Kirkman’s comic to life in the AMC series
The Walking Dead‘s ad campaign has been touting the highlight of Gale Anne Hurd’s career as The Terminator, however, this genre-friendly producer has also brought us Tremors, Bad Dreams, The Abyss, Alien Nation, The Relic and the hyper-violent and incredibly insane Punisher: Warzone.
With The Walking Dead, the AMC series airing on October 31, Hurd took on a project others were afraid to produce and she teamed up with Frank Darabont to bring Robert Kirkman’s long-running comic book to life. Andrew Lincoln, Jon Bernthal, Jeffrey DeMunn, Laurie Holden, Sarah Wayne Callies, Linds Edwards, Jim Coleman, Chandler Riggs and Emma Bell make up just some of the ensemble cast featured in the six-part series about life post-zombie apocalypse.
Shock spoke with Hurd briefly about the show just after we received an early look at the first two episodes (both of which were terrific).
Shock Till You Drop: Realized on the screen, I think the story really takes on an identity of its own.
Gale Anne Hurd: That’s why it was important to have Robert Kirkman as a full partner from the very beginning. He’s the keeper of the Walking Dead and he was always there for the times we wanted to bounce ideas off of the path that he trail-blazed and times that we wanted to step off of it.
I think we’ve seen that before. Where one medium does not translate perfectly into another. They’re two mediums. And that was Robert Kirkman’s sensibility from the very beginning. It was also important to not see this as a series of movies, but as a television series. That was his mandate from the very beginning. It’s the zombie saga that never ends. You can’t do that with a two and a half hour movie.
Shock: Producers always hope their series has longevity, but does the Walking Dead team have any idea how many seasons you’d like to run? The comic isn’t slowing down any time soon, so there’s a wealth of material.
Hurd: When you talk to Robert, he always jokes he has at least 250 comic books in mind. If he’s got 250, we’re game.
Shock: Georgia is being used quite often, production-wise, but it’s always standing in for another city or state. It was nice to see Atlanta serving as, well, Atlanta. And you guys actually unleashed zombies in the streets for some terrific shots.
Hurd: Atlanta is so iconic in the comic and is Rick’s destination. If he gets there, he’ll find the refugee camp and he may find his wife and son. It was impossible to try and cheat that. We could have, but Georgia offered a nice tax credit. The city was so cooperative in allowing us to take over downtown for the end sequence of episode one. We were really able to give it scope and not cheat that. You see it a bit of it in the second episode, the location of the survivor’s camp in the quarry also has magnificent production value. You actually see downtown Atlanta from that location, too.
I think what’s so interesting about zombies is it can happen to anyone. Anyone could become one. It could happen to your friends, family, they are implacable. You can’t reason with them. There’s something cool and creepy about them. That’s why we had thousands of people audition to become zombie extras. They really are monsters in the way vampires are not. Vampires still feel human and zombies are the undead. The other thing that’s kept it alive is that there are so many good zombie movies. We had seen so many bad ones. They didn’t have anything new to bring to the genre.
Shock: Frank obviously couldn’t handle all of the episodes done in this series. Can you talk about the crop of directors you found and did Frank ever consider at one point doing them all?
Hurd: That was impossible for him as the episodes were still being written. He had a hand in all of that as well as the editing, so it was impossible for him to do them all. We looked at countless episodes of our favorite television shows to find the additional directors we selected. That started with Michelle MacLaren who did our second episode. Her episode of Breaking Bad was incredible. Gwyneth Horder-Payton is amazing, Johan Renck who has also done Breaking Bad and Ernest Dickerson who has been a director of one of our favorite shows Dexter. Then there’s Guy Ferland from Rubicon, we have a great family. The important thing for everyone is not just that they had a great eye. This is a character-driven series, so the theme is important as the look. And every director had to measure up as an actor’s director.
Shock: Who’s your most favorite survivor character so far?
Hurd: Hmm, I love Carl and I love Glenn. Little Carl played by Chandler Riggs, Rick and Lori’s son, and Steven Yeung who plays Glenn.
Shock: Speaking of Glenn, awesome use of the new Dodge Challenger, I have to say. Glenn really gets to play with that big toy.
Hurd: [laughs] That was fun. That was another thing that was a blast to do in Atlanta, letting that car fly down the highway.
Shock: Now, have you been keeping up with the comic book?
Hurd: Oh yeah. I have two new issues I need to read this weekend.
Shock: Given how you open the series in the pre-titles sequence, it appears the series is not afraid to go to certain extremes. That said, are there moments in the comic book that might be difficult to bring to the screen later on due to their graphic nature?
Hurd: It will be interesting to see if Rick loses an appendage. We haven’t crossed that bridge yet and we haven’t rule it out. I have a feeling that there will be things that would, surprisingly, feel gratuitous if we went to the comic’s extent. But, I’m very excited to see Michonne and the Governor. They’re pretty extreme characters.
Source: Ryan Turek, Managing Editor
