With AMC’s extremely popular The Walking Dead returning with new episodes tonight, I recently landed an exclusive interview with executive producer Gale Anne Hurd.  She talked about what it’s been like watching the show become a worldwide phenomenon, pressure from the fans, having a bigger budget for season 3, the status of season 4, deleted scenes, and a lot more.  In addition , we talked about Tremors (which she produced), the success of comic book movies, and I got updates on Gaiking and her USA Network pilot called Horizon.  She says it’s “set in the 1940’s and it’s about a woman whose husband disappears in the Pacific and she begins to wonder if it has something to do with an alien spaceship.”  Hit the jump for more.

It looks like Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim may have opened up a can of gigantic robotic worms for mecha adaptations, because Gaiking, the live-action feature based on the animated 70s series, has now reportedly landed production partners. Gale Anne Hurd’s Valhalla Entertainment, Toei Animation and All Nippon Entertainment Works (ANEW) are teaming up to develop the property. Gaiking centers on a former baseball star who pilots the titular super robot against a host of alien enemies known as the Dark Horror Army.

While Transformers certainly showed studios that giant fighting robot movies can be lucrative, I’m hoping to see an uptick in quality of future mecha movies that are sure to be greenlit going forward. Bring me Robotech, Gundam, Voltron, RahXephon, Escaflowne and more. I, for one, welcome our robot overlords! Hit the jump for the full press release on Gaiking, along with the film’s first image and a teaser trailer of test footage that shows the mecha in motion!