'Walking Dead' Special Effects Pro, Greg Nicotero, Shares His Story and Inspiration; Reveals His Greatest Fear
The Story Behind Oscar Winner and Walking Dead director Greg Nicotero
AMC's The Walking Dead is the most-watched show of cable television history and a lot of critics link its success for its gore and mind-boggling visual effects. Now, the brain and guru behind all those splattered blood and eviscerated human flesh effects shares his insights and story behind his success in the industry.
2006 Oscar Winner, special effects and director Greg Nicotero talks about his inspiration about disemboweling human flesh and where it all began. He grew up in Pittsburgh, 30 minutes away from where the iconic zombie-thriller hit 'Dawn of the Dead' and 20 minutes away from the cemetery where the 'Night of the Living Dead' was filmed.
After a chance meeting with George A. Romero, director of Dawn of the Dead (1978 film), the two quickly became friends. Nicotero even quit pre-med in order to manage the make-up effects department in Romero's third 'dead' series, "Day of the Dead".
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In just over a year, he then moved to Los Angeles and rented a house together with make-up artists Bob Kurtzman and Howard Berger. In this small house they then share their friendship and ideas together. After pulling together their passion and ideas, they then created the KNB EFX, a workshop, that after years of hardwork, would grow into a 20,000 square foot base. It is located northwest of L.A and is serving a lot of film and television productions all over the world.
Nicotero rose in prominence after winning an Oscar in 2006 for his work on "Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe". Several years after, in 2010, his director on "The Green Mile", Frank Darabont contacted him to join a new TV series called "The Walking Dead". This would become Nicoter's best and most well-known work so far.
The TV series swiftly became the most-watched show in cable television. Nicotero started out as its special effects and moved to co-executive producer before finally becoming its prolific director.
After the worldwide success of "The Walking Dead", Nicotero talks about creating theme parks inspired by zombies and whatnot. He's currently working on a walk-through "Walking Dead" attraction which is set to open on July 4 at Universal Studios. He has provided special effects and training for the park's 100 extras at a zombie boot camp where he teached on how to find and develop their "inner walker".
For over three decades of filming gore scenes and countless prosthetics and fake blood, the veteran special effects and director was asked if there's anything left out there that scares him. He swiftly responded without hesitation and thinking: "spiders".
So after all these years, The King of Carnage has its fears not lurking in the shadows but is crawling in the cobwebs.
