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AMC’s third season of “The Walking Dead” is in the midst of production and The Wrap caught up with the series’ show runner Glen Mazzara for a quick chat. Topics discussed include the arc of the season, the prison, Michonne and The Governor and the fact that there is no safe haven.
The show, “tells the story of the weeks and months that follow a pandemic zombie apocalypse. County Sheriff Rick Grimes travels with his family and a small group of survivors, constantly in search of a safe and secure home. But the constant pressure of fighting off death on a daily basis takes a heavy toll, sending many to the lowest depths of human cruelty. As Rick struggles to keep his family alive, he will discover that the overwhelming fear of the survivors can be far more dangerous than the mindless walkers roaming the earth.”
Head inside for some excerpts.
What kind of role does the prison play in the season? “The prison itself will be a threatening, malevolent character. It is a challenge to live in the prison. And I think we’ve really been able to get a lot of story out of it. So it will not feel like a safe corner keeping our characters away from central action. It will really play that they are in a shark cage. Life in a prison is life in a shark cage. There is no safe haven in this world. I want to make that clear. At the end of our season 2 finale that farm is overtaken and that farm was that last safe haven, and there’s no safe haven in that world. I want to be very clear about that. No one is safe. There is no safe haven.”
How closely Season Three will follow the comics? “We’re taking the major tentpole characters and storylines from the comics and adapting them to our alternate universe of the TV shows. So it will be just as surprising to comic-book fans as to non-comic-book fans as to how all of it lays out.”
When will audiences see The Governor? “He makes a surprising appearance. I don’t want to give anything away as to the exact episode, but the audience will certainly be ready for his appearance — and they won’t have to wait too long.”
Will the conflict between The Governor and Michonne follow the comic? “Certainly there’s challenging material in the comic book, and I would say there’s equally challenging material on our TV show. I think at the end of season 2 we showed that we don’t pull punches … We’re not going to get soft now. However, we’ll do things on our own time, or when it makes sense for the show. And we’re definitely looking at this Governor-Michonne-Woodbury-prison storyline as a longterm arc.”
What made the zombies? “Robert is not interested in proposing a theory of what caused this apocalypse in his work, and that’s something that I think is important for us. It’s about surviving in this world. We’re lucky in the sense that we’re able to draw on a lot of great zombie films. And one of the things we really pride ourselves on is adding to that literature. Adding original bits with zombies that no one has ever seen. When you look at possible endings, I really am interested in finding new territory and a new type of ending, a surprising ending for this series that no one’s ever done before, that no one’s ever thought of.“
