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NBC Had A Chance To Air 'The Walking Dead' And Totally Blew It
NBC Had A Chance To Air 'The Walking Dead' And Totally Blew It
Kirsten AcunaMay 7, 2014, 02:18 IST
Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC"The Walking Dead" is one of the most popular shows on cable TV. With all its blood and gore, it's probably difficult to imagine a show like that on network TV, but it nearly happened.During a recent episode of Sundance's new show "The Writers Room," creator Robert Kirkman revealed the hit AMC series almost ended up on the peacock network. "It almost got made at NBC," said Kirkman. "It didn't get made because when the pilot was turned in the famous story is one of the executives said, 'This is awesome. I really love this. Does it have to have zombies in it?'"Anyone familiar with "The Walking Dead" comic or series knows that the entire premise of the work is what would happen if there was a zombie apocalypse.Kirkman added there would have been no way they could have done that type of show on network TV. He said AMC made it really easy to decide the cable channel would be the right home for the series."We were very concerned early on what kind of gore we would be able to film, what kind of boundaries we were going to be able to push with the show," said Kirkman. "AMC has this thing called 'Fearfest' and to ease our minds they edited together this four-minute clip of the most horrendous bits of gore that you could see on the network. It was just four solid minutes of … people getting ripped apart and guts going everywhere. We were like, well, if they could show this then, all right, we're good."The huge success of AMC's annual Fearfest marathon of horror movies in October convinced the network to go after Kirkman's zombie series. After four seasons, "The Walking Dead" is one of the most-watched shows on television easily demolishing the ratings for other AMC series "Breaking Bad" and "Mad Men."More than 16 million viewers tuned in for the season 4 premiere. You can watch the full episode here. The conversation takes place around the 6:30 mark.
