'We didn't want this premiere to feel similar to other premieres we wanted to do something bigger and something a little different,' Nicotero explains. The season premiere delivers an episode which picks up where the series off, but shifts its time frame a little. The first block launched in October the second in February, 2016. The sixth season of The Walking Dead will comprise 16 one-hour episodes, broken into two eight-episode blocks. 'He's been at the helm for three seasons and the show has skyrocketed in terms of the material that we've been able to provide for viewers.' 'Bigger and bigger, and it's challenging, but Scott has such an astute eye for the direction of the show,' Nicotero says. It's exhausting and it's exhilarating and it's rewarding. This entire season is going to be spent gasping for the next moment. The Walking Dead's challenge, he adds, is that the scripts have become more ambitious over time. 'It's challenging, because we keep doing more and more and more, and it's the mistake that I made up as a makeup effects guy years ago, which is, they go, we want more, but we have less time and less money,' he says. 'Thank God we have a show runner who respects the genre, understands the genre and respects the source material,' Nicotero says. Maintaining a momentum is, he says, not difficult, the bar has been set high. Sustaining the series is a big challenge, though Nicotero is quick to point out that while Game of Thrones has caught up to its source material, The Walking Dead still has a large library of comic book material to tap. It's exhausting and it's exhilarating and it's rewarding.' it's not like the first episode is huge and then we take a breather.

It doesn't just end with the first episode. 'I wanted to really aim high visually and I wanted the episode to feel bigger than it had ever felt before, so in the design of some of the sequences, I designed them as if we were shooting a $100 million movie,' he says.

'Every day you're on set, every time you collaborate with an actor, every time you collaborate with a writer, you become a better filmmaker,' he says. Stylistically, says Nicotero, the series has aspired to lift the bar every year. Since its premiere in 2010, The Walking Dead has evolved significantly.

My Only One by Gregory M. Thompson