The Walking Dead Showrunner Teases New Environmental Obstacles for Season 10

Following its snow-covered Season 9 finale, a first for The Walking Dead, showrunner Angela Kang promises more never-before-seen environmental obstacles in Season 10.

“The snow episode last year, that was something that we had such a great time doing,” Kang said at San Diego Comic-Con.

“We had wanted to do snow for years, so it was a great undertaking. We’re still exploring other kinds of environmental obstacles that we haven’t done and seen before, so there will be some other new stuff to look out for.”

The Season 10 trailer, debuted at Comic-Con, teased some of this year’s action revolving around a beach — site of the Oceanside community — as well as a struggle with walkers set against the backdrop of a fiery forest.

Pitting its survivors against a harsh blizzard in the Season 9 closer posed a challenge for The Walking Dead: though it “opened up another palette” for the show, director Greg Nicotero admitted the complicated shooting process was “pretty agonizing.”

“The one thing none of us had ever really done was shoot in the snow, and shoot in the snow in Georgia. That was by and far the biggest challenge,” Nicotero told THR.

“We ended up spending a majority of the prep figuring out the snow. Ultimately, I didn’t have much time to prep it. By the time we hired the company Snow Business who came and did all of our snow work, we were five days away from shooting. I felt strongly that we needed a climate we could control, so the entire frozen riverbed area where the zombie attack occurs was all built onstage at Pinewood Studios. It’s something I really pushed for.”

Another key issue was convincingly portraying a snowy outdoors environment and its frostbitten walkers.

“Designing that set and figuring out how far back the riverbed needed to be so we could shoot it in a way that didn’t feel like we were on a sound stage, but actually outside… that, to me, was the biggest accomplishment of the episode,” Nicotero said.

“Three weeks before we shot that episode, we hadn’t even started building the set! None of us knew how we were going to do it. Huge kudos to the production design team and set decorators, and all of the Snow Business team. They really brought it.”

The Walking Dead Season 10 premieres Sunday, October 6 on AMC.