After the ruthlessly teased season seven premiere of The Walking Dead leaves you emotionally exhausted, AMC is going to hit you with a whopping 90 minutes of Talking Dead to push you over the edge. How considerate! This very special (and very long) edition of Talking Dead will go down at the legendary Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles in front of 2,000 sad Dead fans, Varietyreported Monday. The guest list? Literally everyone involved in that much-discussed cliffhanger at the hands of Negan's beloved bat Lucille.
"As a fan myself, even I crave a super-sized Talking Dead to do what it does best—serve as a focal point for fans—along with [host Chris Hardwick], the producers, and the largest cast the show has ever assembled—to experience, discuss,and process together this emotional episode," AMC boss Charlie Collier said Monday. Fans down for bawling their eyes out in front of thousands of strangers will have the chance to score tickets starting Oct. 4 by taking part in an online sweepstakes.
For anyone not up on what "literally everyone" means, allow us to clarify. Dead stars Andrew Lincoln, Norman Reedus, Danai Gurira, Steven Yeun, Lauren Cohan, Sonequa Martin-Green, Michael Cudlitz, Josh McDermitt, Christian Serratos, Ross Marquand, Chandler Riggs, and relative newcomer Jeffrey Dean Morgan will all be hanging out at Hollywood Forever to witness your collective mourning. Thanks to Lucille, at least one of these stars will be using the night to say goodbye to the show forever.
Greg Nicotero, who directed the season premiere, spoke withEntertainment Weekly Monday to throw a few more logs on the hype fire. "I can tell you from the position of the director’s chair, it was by far the most emotional episode that I've ever shot," Nicotero said. "Where we left these characters at the end of season six is, they've been broken. Their world has literally become smaller and smaller and trapped them, and now they're in a situation that they've never been in before where the cavalry is not coming over the hill."
The Walking Deadwill make you cry when it returns to AMC Oct. 23, followed immediately after by more crying with a 90-minute Talking Dead.
