Buckle up. One of hallowed bastions of nerddom with one of the worst records at making a related movie that is in any way watchable has just been optioned for another adaptation. That’s right. Warner Bros. wants to make a Dungeons & Dragons movie.

Gareth Edwards‘ Godzilla remake has had a shaky time of things so far. It’s had a bazillion or so people working on its script (OK, more like five), which is usually not a good sign. And last month it lost two of its producers. But with original The Walking Dead showrunner Frank Darabont working on what is hopefully the script’s last rewrite and the start of production scheduled for March, it’s time for Edwards et. al. to move things along a bit. And that means casting.

We were fairly surprised last December when news broke of The Walking Dead’s Glen Mazzara leaving the show. Not so much for the decision of course but because this was the second showrunner to exit the popular cable series in as many years. Now a third individual has entered the apocalypse fray and we hope they last the night. 

Does The Walking Dead have cooties or something? 

Sunday night’s season finale of The Walking Dead drew a whopping 9 million viewers, a record for AMC. A solid two thirds of that viewership were in the 18-49 age demographic, both numbers proving huge jumps since the second half of the season premiered last month. But also consider this: this happened after a big chunk of the budget was cut and in the first full season without the original showrunner, Frank Darabont. I think it’s safe to say that Glen Mazzara has more than fulfilled his duties since taking over. Also inside: More information about the casting of Danai Gurira as Michonne.

By the way, I’m going to go ahead and talk about things that happened during the second season, so if you’re saving yourself and don’t want to read spoilers, read no further.

Well here’s something I never thought I’d see. Harley Quinn dressed up as Superman. You can thank Eric Stettmeier of the Toyriffic blog for swapping Harley into all sorts of personas. You’ll also see  her as Wonder Woman, a Stormtrooper, Bob Ross and more. Yes, I said Bob Ross. Now check out what else we saw today.

Well, this is heartwarming! The Walking Dead, re-imagined as a golly-gosh family sitcom borrowing the theme song to Growing Pains! I remember watching this with the fam in the mid-’90s, laughing right along with the studio audience when Homeless Zombie showed up. (This was before Kramer, you guys.) Anyway, if this is any indication of what Frank Darabont had planned before he was fired, then I just don’t get Hollywood anymore. Not. At. All.

(via Blastr)

Previously in The Walking Dead

Great news for AMC‘s The Walking Dead coming out of the Television Critics Association press tour: The third season of the show has just gotten a 16-episode order! After a successful second season, the AMC drama has increased its usual season by three episodes, showing faith in the show as well as its new showrunner, Glen Mazzara. That means even more brains, glazed over zombies eyes … and hopefully, more action than we saw in the first half of the second season.

The idea was to do this with a very focused “you are there” documentary feel. Not going all shaky-cam, but still making it a bit rawer and grainier than the rest of the show. We’d start with a squad of maybe seven or eight soldiers being dropped into the city by chopper. They have map coordinates they need to get to; they’ve been told to report to a certain place to provide reinforcement. It’s not a special mission, it’s basically a housekeeping measure putting more boots on the ground to reinforce key intersections and installations throughout the city. And we follow this group from the moment the copter sets them down. All they have to do is travel maybe a dozen blocks, a simple journey, but what starts as a no-brainer scenario goes from “the city is being secured” to “holy shi*t, we’ve lost control, the world is ending.” Our squad gets blocked at every turn and are soon just trying to survive. I wanted to do a really tense, character-driven ensemble story as communications break down, supply lines are lost, escape routes are cut off, morale falls apart, leadership unravels, mutinies heat up, etc. (Yes, this approach owes a spiritual debt to a number of great films, including Walter Hill’s Southern Comfort.) — Frank Darabont, confirming his plans for the zombie soldier story told by Being Human‘s Sam Witwer (who played that zombie soldier), but denying that it was for a web series. No, this is how the second season of AMC‘s The Walking Dead would have started had Darabont not been fired from the show. Want to know more, like how the show’s regular characters played into this? Because there were plans for that, too.

Two episodes into the second season of the hit AMC thriller The Walking Dead, the cable network has officially announced that the zombies will be walking for at least one more year.