IGN got a chance to talk to executive producer, director and make-up effects supervisor Greg Nicotero about The Walking Dead Season 7 and why they decided to end Season 6 on a cliffhanger.
“It propels our people,” he told the site. “It affects our people profoundly, as it does in the comic book. That changes everyone’s direction. The main thing about Season 7 is establishing that the world isn’t what everybody thinks it is, the world out there. At the end of Season 6, Rick was so confident. ‘We’re just going to knock out that outpost, we’re going to f–k these guys up before they f–k us up,’ and it ends with him going, ‘Heh, oh well, I had no idea. What I perceived as the world is not even close to what the reality of the world is,’ and Negan’s there to show him that.”
Nicotero added, “Season 7 of The Walking Dead, there’s all new worlds that we’re going to meet, so it wouldn’t have made sense to end a chapter and then start it halfway through the next chapter. You want to end in one place and pick it up.”
He also addressed fans who think they may have figured out who met Negan’s Lucile, saying that they aren’t necessarily shooting The Walking Dead Season 7 episodes in order. So although fans may have not spotted a certain actor on-set in paparazzi photos or read that they weren’t there, it doesn’t mean that much.
And what about fans’ concerns that Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Negan held back on the swearing compared to the comics? “When you watch the DVD [of Season 6], we shot alternate takes [of Negan’s monologue] with him saying ‘f–k’ every other line. On the DVD, you’ll get the full [Negan].”
Even though such a great villain will be present, Nicotero said they aren’t forgetting the walkers. “That’s what The Walking Dead is. It’s always important to keep the walkers relevant in the show. That’s why the gags that come up, if there’s an episode that doesn’t have a ton of walkers, there’ll be some awesome gags in it that you’ll just be blown away by. I came up with a couple this year that we’ll be shooting next week that we’ve never done before, and I was like, ‘Oh, this is going to be cool.’”
