New Season 2 Images: The Zombies Are Back!

Shotguns at the ready! The ‘walkers’ are back and they’re hungrier than ever.

Feast your eyes on these new images of the zombies set to strike in season 2.

The Walking Dead Season 2 Episode 1 Stills

Last season left us nailed to our seats as the survivors of the zombie apocalypse fled an epic explosion at the CDC. As we enter the new season the survivors must make their way out of Atlanta to escape the tribe of ‘walkers’ that have taken over the city. But with the stakes even higher, what new problems will they face in their fight for survival?

Feast your eyes on these images from the premiere episode of The Walking Dead season 2 for a sneak-peek at what’s in store for the survivors.

Don’t miss the gripping season 2 premiere on October 18th at 21:15 CAT, only on FX.

Interview: Production Designer Greg Melton On The Season 2 Set

The Walking Dead’s production designer Greg Melton reveals more about the season 2 set, his biggest challenges so far and how to survive a zombie apocalypse.

In Season 1, you created a devastated downtown Atlanta. For Season 2, you got a stretch of devastated highway. How did they compare?

They were pretty similar, actually as far as getting them organized, and doing your homework and getting the blocking and positioning of things that need to happen as the scene unfolds. We got really great cooperation down here from the Georgia Department of Transportation to shut down a big four-lane highway, which was the biggest thing — we needed something major. Once we had that, it was just a matter of trying to figure out how many cars would tell the story. I think at one point, on our biggest day, we put almost 200 vehicles into that set, which was over a quarter of a mile long.

And then you have to dress each of the vehicles…

Exactly. It’s all people who are fleeing, so they’re filled with bags and lots of stuff. And then it’s been sitting there for weeks, so we have to come through and do a real heavy aging pass on everything. And then we trashed the highway. Literally. We were dumping bags and bags of trash and things. Everywhere you could see. We created two or three wrecks with burnt grass in the median. I love doing sets like that because you just stand out there and you start putting things around. There are only so many floor plans you can do. And then you gotta stand there in that space and just make it happen.

What’s been the biggest challenge in Season 2?

The biggest challenge was to find the perfect farm. Ever since the end of the first season, everybody’s like “The Farm!” And I couldn’t even think about it: Are we gonna build it? Are we gonna find something? Are we gonna find half of something and build the other half? It really all takes place here. Having said that, once we got it, there were still things we had to work into it like building the barn and then putting a position in for the camp for everyone to hang out. So between the house and the barn and the camp we created this nice sort of triangle of action and story.

Did any work have to go into dressing the house, or are you shooting it as-is?

The exterior of the house, for the most part, we’re shooting as is. We ended up basically emptying the entire inside of the house and redressing it for our needs as Hershel’s farmhouse. But the exterior of the house was perfect the way it was.

Cinematographer David Boyd told us you designed the barn to look alive. What was the inspiration for that?

Initially there was some talk about maybe burning the barn, so I was real interested in giving the barn a kind of face. So it kind of had a personality and if we were going to do the burn it would be very dramatic to see this screaming face down in the meadow. But the approach, it’s much like with the house — the house at first glance is just sort of this beautiful setting and it’s a lovely farmhouse. And then at times, there are certain ways you can shoot it, or find an angle and it can look very disturbing and menacing. And I wanted the barn to have the same feeling. Like, “Oh isn’t that a lovely barn sitting out in the pasture,” and then to find that way to tilt it into that sort of horror — it’s an ominous, dreadful place.

The barn looks like it’s been there 100 years, but is actually brand new. How did you achieve that look?

We actually bought an old roof off of a barn down here in Georgia and we got this beautifully aged and rusted tin roof that’s been around for 80, 90 years. That aspect of it is old, but everything else is new. It’s literally delivered brand new wood, and then we just did our aging passes with it. I wanted it to not be too dark because we’re going to have nighttime work around it, so I kind of skewed it towards a more greyed out, washed out so it would catch moonlight.

Having dressed all these sets, do you know what you’d do in the event of an apocalypse?

Yeah. It’s interesting because as you go through this show you realize there’s really nowhere to run. That’s one thing I’ve learned about this apocalypse. And so I think I would probably hunker down in my own house and fortify it and try to ride it out. It’s not like there’s a hurricane coming that’s gonna destroy the house. It’s just, can you defend it? You might as well just stay put and protect yourself. Kind of the way Morgan did in the Pilot. He fortified the house and was able to live there and stay quiet. There’s something to be said for that in a zombie apocalypse. [Laughs] Be quiet.

Interview and Photo: AMC

The Walking Dead Season 2 Trailer

Worldwide Zombie Invasion!

Few days before the debut of The Walking Dead, Top TV staged a zombie invasion which also took place in 26 major cities around the world, particularly at each city's landmarks.

Hundreds of people whom Top TV had hired, donned zombie make up and gathered around Johannesburg. Elsewhere around the world fellow zombies gathered at NYC's Brooklyn Bridge, London's Big Ben, Madrid's Prado Museum, Athens' Acropolis and Istanbul's Bosphorus Bridge. The so-called "attacks" began in Hong Kong and Taipei at dawn on Tuesday, October 26 and then spread to Johannesburg and across the globe within 24 hours.

It ended in Los Angeles where cast, crew and media were there to watch the first episode early. The zombie invasion was under the direction of "The Walking Dead" 's legendary make-up artist Greg Nicotero.
Check out the zombie worldwide attacks, which happened on october 26th> http://thewalkingdead.foxinternationalchannels.com/

The Walking Dead US premiere attracts monster viewing figures

The US premiere of The Walking Dead which aired on Halloween pulled in a massive 5.3 million viewers! Just to give you an idea of how massive this number is- it was the biggest debut audience for any series premiere on any cable network this year!

Not only that it was also the highest figure for any series  in the whole of FX’s history (even beating the award winning Mad Men- the network’s most successful series to date and Breaking Bad).  It was also the most watched non-sports show on the Sunday night.

Dead Doubts

The Walking Dead star Sarah Wayne Callies has admitted that she thought bringing the zombie drama to television screens would be “impossible”.

The former Prison Break actress will of course play Lori Grimes, the wife of police officer Rick (Andrew Lincoln) in the series. She told SFX that the cable network had taken a risk in adapting Robert Kirkman’s original comic. 

“[I thought] that it was absolutely ludicrous,” she said. “As an actor, it’s exciting to try something that’s such a risk.”

Callies also insisted that each episode of the show will be unique to the last.
“They’re almost in different genres from week to week,” she claimed. “Some of them are very silent and quiet. Some of them are covered in zombies and some of them have almost none. It’s so exciting to be a part of something like that.”