NBC Wanted To Do The Walking Dead Without Zombies

In an appearance on Sundance TV on Friday night, The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman revealed that the show almost got made on another network besides AMC with one crucial difference. "It [The Walking Dead] actually did almost get made at NBC," said Kirkman. "It didn't get made because when the pilot was turned in, the famous story is one of the executives said, 'This is awesome. I really love this. Does it have to have zombies in it?'" Kirkman added, "You couldn't have done that kind of show at that network. We were very concerned early on what kind of gore we were going to be able to film and what kind of boundaries we were going to be able to push with the show. And AMC has this thing called Fearfest, and so to ease our minds, they just edited together this four minute clip of the most horrendous bits of gore that you could see on the network." After watching four solid minutes of people getting ripped apart and guts going everywhere, Kirkman concluded that AMC would be a good home for The Walking Dead.