‘The Walking Dead’ Producer Reveals The Reason Behind The Mid-Season Break

The Walking Dead is taking a break until this February. Why would the series decide to apply the brakes just when so much incredible stuff just went down?

While discussing the hit AMC series with the folks at The Walker Stalkers, producer Gale Anne Hurd revealed the reasons behind the extended hiatus. In short: The cast and crew needed a moment to collect their thoughts and step back from the show before diving head-first into the season’s final episodes.

The Walking Dead producer explained:

“As a person involved in producing the show, it’s great to have this opportunity to catch our breath, especially in post-production, it’s a very demanding show for post-production and you can certainly fall behind. We have to deliver the show early because it’s translated into I think 31 different languages, because it airs across the globe within a week and in many cases within 24 or 48 hours of its premiere in the US.”

Hurd said she feels the sort of “A season and B season” approach allows the writers to piece together a much more dynamic batch of episodes. In her opinion, telling stories in this fashion benefits the series in the long run.

“It also provides us with an opportunity for the kind of storytelling you’ve seen so far this season, where we can have what many others shows would consider to be a season finale in the mid-season. And we can build up to an even more significant season finale,” she said.

If you had a difficult time dealing with all the surprises that occurred during the first half of season four, The Walking Dead star Andrew Lincoln stated that the writers have a ton of surprises waiting in the wings. In short: Prepare yourself for just about anything.

“I will stress this as well. You haven’t even seen the half of it yet. The back eight is more radical than ever before. It’s almost a tale of two seasons. It really is that radical, the difference between the first eight and the back eight,” Lincoln recently told Yahoo.

He added, “And really, trust me, I think that three of the strongest episodes we’ve done this season are yet to come. Probably four. There are two episodes that I absolutely adore in the back eight, one of which I think is going to be the most controversial episode that we’ve probably ever been involved in, and that’s saying something.”

The Walking Dead is presently scheduled to return on February 9.