Actors Andrew Lincoln (L) and Jeffrey Dean Morgan attend AMC's 'The Walking Dead' Panel during Comic-Con International 2016 at San Diego Convention Center on July 22, 2016 in San Diego, California. (Photo : Getty Images/Jesse Grant)
The Season 7 premiere of "The Walking Dead" shocked viewers after Negan handed down his own brand of justice by brutally killing two major characters of the show. Shortly after it aired, the gruesome episode sparked backlash among viewers, prompting the AMC show's producers to make some changes.
In the season opener, Negan viciously bashed in the skulls of Abraham and Glenn in front of everyone with a little help from his barbwire-coated baseball bat, Lucille. The season episode sparked outrage among viewers who criticized the intensity of violence in the episode, prompting the show's producers to dial down the level of violence in the following episodes that were still in production, according to executive producer Gale Anne Hurd.
"We were able to look at the feedback on the level of violence," Variety quoted Hurd as saying during a panel discussion at the NATPE conference. "We did tone it down for episodes we were still filming for later on in the season."
As some of the episodes were still left to be filmed when the season premiere aired on Oct. 23, the producers decided to incorporate the changes. However, given the show's history of blood and gore, the producers' goal was not to completely remove violence from the series, but instead ensure that the violence does not fall into gratuitous territory, which means that there will still be scenes that will make viewers cringe.
Hurd added that they took the viewers' feedback into consideration in order to make sure that they did not cross a line and the fans' extreme reaction to the episode drew attention to how deeply the fans care about the show.
"When something matters a lot and it has a universality, then you're bothered by it and you care about it," AMC Networks president-CEO Josh Sapan was quoted as saying by the same publication. "The Walking Dead" returns with its second leg on Feb. 12. The series has also been renewed for an eight season and is slated to premiere in late 2017 with the series' 100th episode, TVLine reported.
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