Image Credit: John M. Heller/Getty ImagesHad a killer cyborg come back from the future and prevented the birth of producer Gale Anne Hurd, then the history of movies over the last 30 years may well have been very different. For one thing, we might not be familiar with the concept of killer robots coming back from the future to prevent people being born, given that Hurd was responsible for shepherding the first Terminator movie to box-office success back in 1984. Since then, Hurd’s credits have included such sci-fi epics as Aliens, The Abyss, and both Hulk movies. For the past year, Hurd’s attention has been directed at the small screen and Shawshank Redemption director Frank Darabont’s adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s Walking Dead comic. The show — which is exec produced by Hurd, Darabont, and Kirkman, amongst others — debuts this Halloween as part of the AMC’s annual Fearfest extravaganza.
Judging by the two episodes EW has seen, the show is every bit as gore-drenched as its source material, which tracks a band of folks as they try to survive in a world overrun by “walkers” without losing their own humanity. “Let’s face it, the zombie’s modus operandi is to kill and consume people, so we do have to have some of that,” says Hurd of her latest project, which stars Love Actually actor Andrew Lincoln. “And the humans are in a position where they need to dispatch zombies, and that can be with shovels, guns, axes. You name it. But it’s really pretty interesting, because every show has kind of a different take. The second one has a lot of action, But the third one actually has a lot of character development, and we spend a lot less time with zombie attacks.”
One notable aspect of the adaptation is how slowly Darabont — who directed the pilot — is making his way through Kirkman’s still ongoing saga. While not short of zombie mayhem, the first two episodes really just cover the events featured in the first two issues of Kirkman’s comic. Which means that, if the TV show proves a success, Hurd and Darabont will not run short of zombie adventures any time soon—the comic version of The Walking Dead has already reached issue #78. “And Robert’s said that he has at least 250 issues in mind,” explains Hurd. “So I think we’re in good shape.”
After the jump, the producer talks more about The Walking Dead—and what exactly she intends to do, come the inevitable zombie apocalypse.
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Image Credit: Everett Collection (2)Two lunatics enter, one lunatic leaves! The murderous matchup for all the marbles! The psycho showdown! That’s right, after after a blood-curdling month obsessing over the most deranged characters in movie history, we’ve reached the final battle in our Psycho Killers bracket game: Halloween‘s Michael Myers vs. Silence of the Lambs’ Hannibal Lecter. To reach the finals, Myers made corpses out of Billy Chapman (Silence Night, Deadly Night), Jigsaw-Amanda (Saw), Norman Bates (Psycho), and Freddy Kreuger (Nightmare on Elm Street), while Hannibal the Cannibal’s long, winding road to hell included victories over Patrick Bateman (American Psycho), John Doe (Se7en), Anton Chigurh (No Country for Old Men), and Jack Torrance (The Shining).
