Just like the first season, The Walking Dead wants to open its brand new season with an extended episode that will leave zombie fans foaming at the mouth. The idea of having a feature length premiere is something that has become a given for a lot of TV of recent years and it works with something like this. Especially when there is so much to set up for the season to come.
AMC also announced that they will split up the season. The 13 episode season will debut its first 7 episodes in the fall before delivering the final 6 on February 12th next year. A bold move but I can bet you a small fortune that it has something to do with that massive clusterfuck at the network that saw replaced show runner Frank Darabont axed from the show by power hungry executives.
I loved the first season of The Walking Dead and it continued the string of great original series work brought by AMC, having previously brought us Breaking Bad and Mad Men. I am to be honest a tad ambivalent about this new season considering all that has gone on at the studio plus all the rumours about unusable footage and the replacement of writers. Those rumours may have been bloated but there will be some iota of truth in it with a show as big as it is with a network as small as AMC.
No matter, the extended debut of The Walking Dead premieres on October 16th.
