The Walking Dead is Going All Out to Avoid S7 Spoilers

CBR

By Rob Cave

Published Oct 19, 2016

How do you keep a secret on a show like The Walking Dead? Robert Kirkman has the answer - just don't ask him who dies in Season 7.

Most TV shows have to work hard at promotion, often sending out multiple episodes to media organisations to help promote upcoming seasons. A select few have the opposite problem and have to go to great lengths to conceal big reveals and future plot twists. "The Walking Dead" is definitely that second kind of show.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the series' creator Robert Kirkman described some of the techniques "The Walking Dead" team has employed to prevent the secrets of the Season 7 being revealed too soon.

"Not sending screeners out [to press] is a big one." the show's executive producer explained. "There's a lot of extra security measures on distribution and the international dubbing and those things to help prevent the kind of leaks that we've had in the past.

Kirkman went on to add "There has been a lot of tactics used in filming... monitoring actor movement and trying to do things in secret. We've employed body doubles in places to make people think that people are in places that they're not. It's pretty exciting to try and hide certain things. This is a big season, so we're not just protecting things that happen in the first episode; there are things that happen in the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth episode and beyond."

The article also contained the previously released Season 7 sneak peak video that alludes to an injury Rick suffered long ago in the comic series. Is that an indication that something similar is coming to TV Rick?

Kirkman suggests not, saying "I wouldn't take a playful moment where we're tipping our hat to those fans [who have read to comic] to be any indicator to what we have planned or what we're doing. This is us acknowledging that we know there are different tiers to our fan base and we're having fun with it. I think it's great because it adds an extra level of storytelling where you get something else out of a scene or are expecting a scene to go a certain way and it doesn't. Those are fun expectations to play with. It makes us up our game because we're able to tell stories on multiple levels, depending on how engaged the audience is in the entire 'Walking Dead' experience."

Starring Andrew Lincoln, Steve Yeun, Chandler Riggs, Norman Reedus, Melissa McBride, Lauren Cohan, Lennie James, Danai Gurira, Sonequa Martin-Green, Michael Cudlitz and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, "The Walking Dead" Returns on Sunday, October 23, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on AMC. The season premiere will be followed by a special 90-minute episode of the live chat show “Talking Dead,” featuring the main cast as guests.