The Walking Dead: Kirkman Responds To Suit, Make-Up Supervisor Talks Return

The Walking Dead returns to AMC tomorrow night and make-up supervisor, and newly dubbed co-executive producer, Gregory Nicotero spoke with Blastr about the second half of the season. We’ve also got a follow-up on The Walking Dead lawsuit situation between original creators Tony Moore and Robert Kirkman. Kirkman has now given a statement. 

Blaster interviewed the Emmy winning make-up supervisor (beware if you click through, the Blastr article leads off with a huge spoiler). “What’s exciting about it is that the second half of season two takes a very unique shift,” said Nicotero. “It’s now been proven that Hershel was wrong—so his character goes through a lot of changes. From this point on, finding Sophia dead in the barn changes everything. I mean, it was their driving force, and now the driving force has now shifted. So Rick begins questioning where he’s leading the group.”

“We got a lot of stuff up our sleeves. … It’s some fantastic, fantastic drama. We’ll certainly have some great zombie moments coming up and really captivating stuff. I can’t wait to talk about it and share it with people,” said Nicotero, who will also be directing an episode this year. “I’ve never had that before. So it really feels like partially kind of my baby a little bit.”

Nicotero believes that The Walking Dead has redefined zombies. “Not only how they look, but how people perceive them,” he said. “So it’s something that we certainly have been working on perfecting because of the dramatic aspects of the show. I mean, I don’t correct people, but when people talk about The Walking Dead and they call it a zombie show, I don’t look at it as a zombie show. I think it’s a fantastically acted and directed and written drama that has characters who happen to be zombies.”

Meanwhile, original writer of the comic series as well as writer and producer on the AMC series, Kirkman has given a statement to The Hollywood Reporter about the lawsuit from former TWD collaborator and friend, Moore. Here’s what he had to say:

The lawsuit is ridiculous, we each had legal representation seven years ago and now he is violating the same contract he initiated and approved and he wants to misrepresent the fees he was paid and continues to be paid for the work he was hired to do. Tony regularly receives payment for the work he did as penciler, inker and for gray tones on the first six issues of The Walking Dead comic series and he receives royalties for the TV show, to assert otherwise is simply incorrect.

In 2005, Moore says he signed a deal giving him 60 percent of “Comic Publishing Net Proceeds, as well as 20 percent of “motion picture net proceeds” for The Walking Dead. But he’s also claiming “Kirkman and his agents devised a scheme to fraudulently induce him to assign his copyright interests over to Kirkman’s company.”

Kirkman’s attorney Allen Grodzky said the suit is “totally frivolous. Mr. Moore is owed no money at all. And Mr. Moore’s contract has an attorneys’ fees clause in it so we will be going after him to collect attorneys’ fees. We are taking this matter very seriously.”

(via Blastr and The Hollywood Reporter)