AMC announced on Thursday (September 1) that the second season premiere of “The Walking Dead” will be super-sized and that the zombie drama’s run will be split into two chunks. In the process, the cable network also greenlit an unscripted series from Kevin Smith.
“The Walking Dead,” AMC’s most popular series, will return on Sunday, October 16 with a 90-minute premiere. “Walking Dead” will then air six one-hour episodes in the following weeks.
From there, “The Walking Dead” will take a brief break and then will be back on Sunday, February 12 for a run of six weeks of original episodes.
“The Walking Dead” continues to star Andrew Lincoln, Sarah Wayne Callies, Jon Bernthal and a deep ensemble cast. Adapted from the Robert Kirkman comic, the series has weathered waves of complicated press this summer amidst reporters that Frank Darabont was replaced as showrunner after balking at the idea of delivering the hit series on a reduced budget.
The second half of the “Walking Dead” season will be paired with the premiere of “Secret Stash,” an unscripted series set in Kevin Smith”s comic shop Jay and Silent Bob”s Secret Stash, documenting the daily banter of workers and customers alike.
“Draper. Meth. Zombies. This show couldn’t be on a better network. AMC is to television what Miramax was to cinema back when I first got in the game: they’re the premier destination for any storyteller looking to spin an offbeat yarn that no other outlet has the stones to touch,” Kevin Smith states. “And as if I didn’t love them enough, now they’re putting my friends on TV! I’m ecstatic, proud, and extremely lucky to be in bed with a network I watch religiously anyway. And if they’d pushed just a little harder in the negotiations, I’d have done this show for no payment beyond early access to every episode of ‘Mad Men,’ ‘Breaking Bad,’ and ‘Walking Dead.'”
Adds AMC SVP of Original Programming Joel Stillerman, “The comic book store is, in many ways, the corner bar for comic book fans. It is still this place where everybody knows your name, and you can go and geek out with like minded people. If I lived closer, I”d want to hang out at here. It”s got great energy, great personality, and is a perfect portal into the world of comic book culture.”