Despite speculation of a July return date, AMC’s spectacular Breaking Bad will not return until almost mid-August (August 11th at 9 p.m., to be exact).  The series will conclude its run with eight episodes, the back half of its fifth season, and serve as a lead-in to new drama series Low Winter Sun.  Also, AMC will be adding Talking Bad (like Talking Dead), a half-hour live after-show that will discuss and dissect the events of the Breaking Bad episode earlier that night.

AMC also announced the renewals of its unscripted programs Talking Dead, Comic Book Men and Freakshow, as well as the premiere dates for Small Town Security, Showville, The Pitch and Owner’s Manual.  Hit the jump for all of the details, plus a rundown of the cable network’s new original programming (heaps of it!) that’s currently in development, including the recently announced sci-fi series Ballistic City from director Joseph Kosinski and screenwriter Travis Beacham.

We just recently got a peek at the currently in production third season of The Walking Dead which won’t hit our televisions until October. However, it sounds like AMC is interested in keeping excitement high throughout the whole summer for the zombie drama series. The cable network has just announced that on July 7th and 8th, starting at 11:30am EST each day, that’s just one week before the series will make a splash at Comic-Con in San Diego, the first two seasons will run in their entirety for fans and new viewers to recap the whole series.

Hit the jump for more.

It appears comic books and zombies are still all the rage for fans of AMC programming. Obviously The Walking Dead is already a hit, but apparently the talk show hosted by Chris Hardwick that follows every episode of the hit drama with special guests and fans of the series is big enough to keep around as well. AMC just announced that it has renewed Talking Dead for a second season and the Pawn Stars inspired nerd-fest Comic Book Men has also been picked up for a second season. Hit the jump for comments from both Talking Dead host Chris Hardwick and Comic Book Men creator and executive producer Kevin Smith.