It appears that Stephen King’s beloved novel The Shining is all the rage at the moment.  King is set to release his sequel novel Doctor Sleep later this fall and the Shining-centric documentary Room 237 recently hit theaters, but now it appears that the story is headed to the big screen once again by way of a prequel.  Glen Mazzara—who previously took over for Frank Darabont as showrunner on AMC’s The Walking Dead before being forced out of the position halfway through the most recent season—has been tapped to write the screenplay for the Warner Bros. prequel film The Overlook Hotel. Hit the jump for more.

Third time’s the charm?  Following the shocking news that Glen Mazzara would be stepping down as showrunner on AMC’s hit drama series The Walking Dead, TV Line now reports that supervising producer Scott Gimple has been tapped as the replacement.  Gimple will mark the third showrunner on the 3-season-old series, as original creator/showrunner Frank Darabont was forced out halfway through the show’s second season.  Hit the jump for more details.

AMC is getting really good at dicking around the showrunners of their most popular and creatively beloved shows.  The network’s frequent headbutting with Mad Men creator/showrunner Matthew Weiner is no secret, and they edged out The Walking Dead creator/showrunner Frank Darabont halfway through the hit zombie series’ second season.  Now, in a shocking move on the heels of a season four renewal, current The Walking Dead showrunner Glen Mazzara has announced that he’s leaving the show over a “difference of opinion” with the network.  Hit the jump for more.

The hit AMC drama series The Walking Dead is back for Season 3, with higher stakes, more threatening human villains and, of course, plenty of zombies.  When things pick back up, Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and his fellow survivors continue to seek refuge, this time in an abandoned prison, but soon discover that there are greater forces to fear than just the walking dead.  The struggle to survive has never been so perilous, especially considering that Rick’s wife, Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies), is close to the due date of her pregnancy.  The show also stars Laurie Holden, Steven Yeun, Norman Reedus, Chandler Riggs, Lauren Cohan, Scott Wilson, IronE Singleton, Melissa McBride, Danai Gurira and David Morrissey.

At the show’s press day, showrunner Glen Mazzara and writer Robert Kirkman (who also created the comic book) talked about how open the writers’ room is to changes from the comic book, which change they were most nervous about fan reaction to, the main themes of Season 3, shooting the opening sequence for the season with no dialogue, keeping the mystery of Michonne (Gurira), why Daryl (Reedus) is so much fun to write for, whether or not the show could survive if you killed off all of the original characters, and why it’s important for them to reinvent the conventions of television.  Check out what they had to say after the jump, and be aware that there are some spoilers.

We’re about a month away from the premiere of the third season of The Walking Dead on AMC, but that doesn’t mean you have to wait that long to go inside the infamous prison.  In what’s sure to be the centerpiece of the upcoming season, the prison will act as a safehouse of sorts for our remaining heroes.  But for how long?  Well, before the living start staking claims and the dead start wandering its halls, The Walking Dead creator, Robert Kirkman is here to take us on a behind-the-scenes tour of the prison.

The Walking Dead, starring Andrew Lincoln, Norman Reedus, Chandler Riggs, Sarah Wayne Callies, Steven Yuen, Michael Rooker and IronE Singleton, returns to AMC starting Sunday, October 14th.  Hit the jump to take the tour.

The third season of The Walking Dead is drawing near, and fans are starting to get an idea of what’s in store for everyone’s favorite inept zombie apocalypse survivors.  Last week two new teaser trailers landed online, and today we’ve got a batch of new images and some quotes from showrunner Glen Mazzara about the new season.  We last saw our crew of survivors in an extremely precarious situation, and these images promise plenty of human-on-zombie violence when the show returns.  Furthermore, we get a better look at new characters The Governor (David Morrissey) and Michonne (Dania Gurira).

Hit the jump to check out the images and to see what Mazzara has to say about the upcoming episodes.

The second season of The Walking Dead truly felt like two separate shows.  The first half embracing a much more languid pace culminating in the discovery of a death long since thought known versus the second half’s uber-accelerated, major-character-culling end.  If the first half depicted the group’s somber loss of hope in this dystopian landscape, then the second half was the metaphorical retort of a middle finger.  Who needs ‘hope’ anyways?  Let’s shoot something in the head and feel better – at least for a moment or two.

At the Saturn Movie Awards, Glen Mazzara (Executive Producer/Showrunner of The Walking Dead), was on hand to pick up the award for Best Television Presentation.  While there, I had the opportunity to speak with Mazzara about the pace of the upcoming third season, more major character deaths and the ‘Prison’ storyline arc, among many other topics of conversation.  For the full interview, hit the jump.

Though in previous years TV panels were relegated to Sunday in Hall H at Comic-Con, this year the television shows invaded the 6,000 seater on Friday in a big way.  One of the most anticipated panels was for AMC’s The Walking Dead, and Nerdist’s Chris Hardwick hilariously moderated the panel packed with the series’ stars as well as creator Robert Kirkman and showrunner Glen Mazzara.  Hit the jump to read my full recap.

Just ahead of the show’s Hall H debut next week at Comic-Con, a new poster for the upcoming third season of AMC’s The Walking Dead has landed online.  Moreover, showrunner Glen Mazzara recently talked a bit about what to expect when the zombie series returns:

“The entire landscape has fallen to zombies. The entire world has collapsed, the apocalypse has taken over, the zombies have taken over, there’s no safe place. And I think in the past our characters thought they could find some safe harbor, and now there’s just no good hiding place at all.”

We’ll likely have a much better idea of what season three will entail after next week’s panel, and you can rest assured we’ll have a full recap up on the site shortly afterwards.  The poster teases two major characters from the comics making their debuts this season: Michonne (played by Danai Gurira) and The Governor (David Morrissey).  Hit the jump to check out the poster and to see what Mazzara has to say about Morrissey’s work as the fan-favorite antagonist.

After watching everyone wander around The Farm for most of Season 2, fans of The Walking Dead have been eagerly anticipating the third season’s teased locale of The Prison – something readers of the comic series know is a highly anticipated setting, and for good reason.

The series returns to AMC in October, and the cast should be looking more distressed than usual on screen since during their current filming schedule Georgia has reached the most extreme temperatures in its history (Last year, cast and crew members only had fire ants, mosquitoes and ticks to battle – oh the glamour of film!). For the new pictures from the frying-hot set and more about The Prison itself (possible spoilers), hit the jump.

There have been quite a few spoilery news tidbits concerning AMC’s The Walking Dead lately, but the one safe thing we can talk about right up front is the inclusion of the villainous Governor, played in the upcoming season by David Morrisey (The Reaping). As  he plays the main antagonist (of the non-shambling variety) to Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and the gang, it’s probably a good thing to know where the third season of The Walking Dead is going to take us as far as the Governor is concerned.  Showrunner Glen Mazzara recently addressed that question while shooting on location.  I’ve done my best to keep this spoiler-free, but all bets are off after you hit the jump.

We’re just 20 days away from the biggest pop culture convention of the year with Comic-Con 2012 coming next month, and slowly but surely studios and TV networks are firming up their rosters of films and series that will take San Diego by storm. This week it’s AMC announcing their line-up of panels for the convention, and the trio of programs hitting the Con is no surprise.

The Walking Dead will make a triumphant return to the convention with an hour-long panel in Hall H moderated by Talking Dead host Chris Hardwick and including special guests like cast members Andrew Lincoln, Sarah Wayne Callies, Laurie Holden, Norman Reedus, Steven Yeun, Lauren Cohan, Denai Guerrero and David Morrisey along with Executive Producer and Showrunner Glen Mazzara, Executive Producer Gale Anne Hurd, Executive Producer Robert Kirkman and Co-Executive Producer and Special Effects Make-up Supervisor Greg Nicotero.  But that’s not all. Hit the jump for more.

Summer is only just kicking off, but there’s plenty of viewers who already can’t wait for the fall, if only for the third season of The Walking Dead to premiere on AMC. Thankfully, though there’s months until we see the premiere, AMC is teasing viewers with a behind-the-scenes featurette of the first episode of the third season, already in production. Words like dark, ominous, harder, faster are all tossed around by cast members like Andrew Lincoln and Norman Reedus. There’s also hints and mentions of new characters we’ve already heard about including David Morrissey as The Governor and Danai Gurira as Michionne . There will be a great link behind the camera from the second season finale to the third season premiere as Ernest R. Dickerson is at the helm of both. Anyway, I’ll let the featurette talk about the rest after the jump.

On February 12^th, the hit zombie series The Walking Dead returns to AMC. Picking up just where the last episode and big reveal left off, that huge event rocks all of the characters to their core, leading some of them down surprising paths in the last six episodes of Season 2. While zombies are always a terrifying threat, a new human threat is looming, as the capacity for humans to hurt each other proves infinite.

While at the TCA Winter Press Tour, executive producer/writer/comic book creator Robert Kirkman and executive producer/showrunner Glen Mazzara talked about the slow build-up during the first half of the season, how the second half will accelerate the storytelling, the decision to introduce a new human threat, fan favorite characters from the comics who will likely appear sooner rather than later, the hope to bring Lennie James back at some point, and whether the possible concept ideas that former showrunner Frank Darabont had for Season 2 could ever have happened. Kirkman also talked about where the comic book series is headed, and the types of comic book titles he’s looking to release through his publishing label. Check out what they had to say after the jump, and be aware that there are some spoilers:

Many were surprised to learn yesterday that series creator/executive producer/director Frank Darabont had stepped down as showrunner on AMC’s massively popular series The Walking Dead. Refusing to let the news hamper business as usual, the network has now promoted Darabont’s number two, Glen Mazzara, to the position of showrunner. Mazzara joined the series near the end of 2010 (penning the episode “Wildfire”) and has previously worked on shows such as The Shield, Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior, and Hawthorne.

News of Mazzara’s promotion comes courtesy of EW. The report mentions that it is still unclear what role Darabont, who is currently under a two-year contract, will contribute to Dead (perhaps a consultant?). The show is currently shooting its second season in Georgia with the premiere scheduled for Sunday, October 16th.