The ninth season of The Walking Dead has been a tumultuous and unsettling one in many ways (especially with the loss of Andrew Lincoln and fellow lead Lauren Cohan early on) but the show’s six-year time jump and its tonal shift (to hew closer to the original source material, the Robert Kirkman comics) have been a…

Meet Alpha, a living nightmare who comes wrapped in undead mutilation. AMC just released this first-look poster and official key art for the February 10th mid-season return of The Walking Dead, now in its ninth season. The unsettling image shows Alpha, portrayed by Samanta Morton (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find The…

Eight years after it began its steady shuffle to the top of the ratings charts, The Walking Dead has experienced occasional bumps in the ratings road. Even so, during a conference call with Wall Street analysts today to discuss AMC Networks’ strong third-quarter results, CEO Josh Sapan said the zombie phenomenon has a…

For the seventh year in a row, Greg Nicotero is celebrating an Emmy nom. Nicotero brings his unique brand of special effects makeup to AMC's The Walking Dead, producing some of the most elaborate zombie gore ever seen on screen. He’s also an exec producer and director on the show. His previous credits include Breaking…

Why is horror so successful on television? We’ll get to that, but first make note – Grimm is planning some kind of reboot in its fifth season. The Zombie-as-metaphor has evolved into a reflection of American office culture. And the hardest special effect of all is a good toupee. Those revelations and more spewed forth…

AMC Networks CEO Josh Sapan told analysts at the UBS Annual Global Media and Communications Conference that he’s “exploring changing the mix of content on AMC” based on the recent success of its zombiefest The Walking Dead — and four non-fiction series he plans to introduce beginning next year. He wasn’t specific…

We’ll see whether the Street is more impressed by AMC’s better-than-expected profits, or disappointed in the worse-than-expected revenues. The cable network company reports 3Q net earnings of $40M, up 58.4%, on revenues of $283.9M, up 4.6%. Analysts thought they’d see revenues of $292.1M. But the earnings, at 55 cents…

Frank Darabont spent five fruitless years of pitching an idea for a zombie television series. But he’s back on Hollywood's A-list after The Walking Dead, which he created from Robert Kirkman's original comic book, generated higher ratings in its first season than any of AMC's previous original shows. Now Darabont has…

Genre series are all the rage in cable with the success of AMC’s The Walking Dead and HBO’s True Blood, which have been breaking series records to rank as their network’s top-rated series and become pop culture staples. A genre series, The Vampire Diaries, also is the highest-rated series on the CW, which has had…

The Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. once again went for a mix of critical darlings and pop culture standouts in its TV nominations, with stronger emphasis on popular shows this year. The freshman series that landed first best series noms were the praised HBO drama Boardwalk Empire and Showtime comedy The Big C as well…

Only two new series, HBO’s Boardwalk Empire and Showtime’s Nurse Jackie, were able to crack the top series categories for the 2011 WGA Awards for television, which remained largely unchanged from last year, with 4 out of 5 nominees in each category returning from last year. On the drama side, Boardwalk Empire replaced…

AMC’s breakout hit The Walking Dead ended its 6-episode first-season run with another series high. More than 6 million viewers tuned in last night for the closer, eclipsing the previous series high of 5.6 million posted the previous Sunday. In 18-49, the finale averaged 4 million, also a new record and the highest…