Back in March, after the season finale of
The Walking Dead (TWD), I had the opportunity to chat with Executive Producer
Gale Anne Hurd about a number of topics ranging from her record breaking show to the early days of her career and what ultimately motivates her to continue producing films and television. You can listen to our chat in it's entirety below.
Hurd spearheads her own company
Valhalla Entertainment, which currently has an impressive number of comic book, film and television projects that are in various stages of development. Of course, talking with
Hurd, I definitely sensed that despite the fact she's presently developing all these projects, it's her post-apocalyptic
AMC show that just might be her personal favorite. It's a few months later now and
Hurd is currently on
TWD set, focused on what will surely be an epic third season which she described as being
"intense" and
"more along the lines of the second half of season two" in terms of pacing.
When we began to touch on her love for comic books, she revealed that she's a "Marvel Girl" and grew up reading
The Incredible Hulk and
The Fantastic Four while dabbling in a little
Batman, Superman and
Archie occasionally. Despite reading the far out fantasies of
Marvel and
DC growing up, she initially wanted to be a lawyer before going off to college and discovering her love for film. After graduating from
Stanford, she worked for legendary horror and sci-fi master,
Roger Corman, whom she says gave her an opportunity to really learn the industry at a time when most women were rarely given that option.
Today,
Gale's known as an extremely successful film producer with such titles as
The Terminator, Aliens and
The Incredible Hulk to her credit. As a producer she says she's involved in every step of production and was responsible for assembling the creative teams behind some of your favorite movies. However, despite some very successful films, she says that today, she prefers working in television due in part to the flexibility of telling a story across thirteen hours instead of two. As CEO of
Valhalla,
Gale continues working in the comic book medium and has a number of properties in development. Currently
Valhalla has
Greg Pak's Dead Man's Run in comic shops and has adaptions of
Magdalena,
Gearhead and
The Scourge in various stages of development. It appears news from
Gearhead could potentially be revealed any day now while
The Scourge is close to securing a tv deal.
However, it's her next television show,
Port Royal, a pirate series optioned by
FX that could very well be a television changer, similar to
TWD. She tells me that the show will be nothing like
Pirates of the Caribbean and that people should think more along the lines of
Sons of Anarchy and
Justified in terms of tone,
"It will be brutal and unlike anything you've ever seen on television before" says
Hurd.
As we winded down our chat, I decided to have a little fun and asked her hypothetically, who directs and who stars if she's producing a
Wonder Woman movie for
Warner Bros. Playing along, her first choice for director was
James Cameron with
Christopher Nolan as a second option, while her choice to wield the
Lasso of Truth and twin indestructible bracelets was surprisingly, the diminutive
Mila Kunis. But hey, what do I know, that's why I write about movies and
Gale makes them. Lastly, I asked her will we ever see a
Walking Dead movie?
"It's up to Robert Kirkman" she says but it's a possibility after the show is over and that an adjunct like say
Rise of the Governor would be an ideal adaption.