#SDCC18: CREEPSHOW – Exclusive One-on-One Interview with Greg Nicotero

Much like Nathan Grantham, all these years later Creepshow fans still want their cake. Thankfully, Shudder and Greg Nicotero are there to fill the order for us! I sat down with Greg for a private one-on-one interview at the San Diego Comic-Con to get you guys the goods on what you can expect.

I was traveling,” said Nicotero about how this revival came to be. “I was at the airport and I wanted something to read. I found this book called Nights of the Living Dead, which is a series of short stories that take place the same night as Night of the Living Dead does in Romero’s timeline. I started reading and I immediately fell in love with one of the stories which was really clever and interesting. I spoke to my producing partner Brian Witten and said, ‘Dude… we have to find the rights to this story and shoot it,’ just because I really liked it. So he reached out to the writer and was told that said writer was in the process of getting the rights to Creepshow. Just COMPLETE coincidence. Then I was told that the writer actually works for AMC’s Shudder. It’s kind of amazing. My want to read something interesting on the plane ended up bringing me full circle to Creepshow and that was the first movie set that I spent significant time on. George [Romero] offered me a job on it, but the irony was that I had to turn it down because I was gonna go to college and be pre-med. Four years later, when Day of the Dead came about, George offered me a job… AGAIN. There was no way I was gonna make the same mistake twice.

Creepshow always had a special place in my heart,” Greg continues with a truly thoughtful smile. “I love the tone of it, I loved the look of it, and you can tell that it was made with passion… with Steve King’s sense of humor and George’s love. The original Creepshow was really intended to be a comic book come to life. I don’t think we did that with the sequel, but I want to get back to that kind of feel. I’ve been talking with a lot of people who contributed to the original artistically to lend a hand in the show.

Lending itself to the authentic feel of the comic-to-life model of the original film, Nicotero has some pretty cool things in mind. “My plan is that when each episode drops, if you subscribe to Shudder, you’ll get a free digital comic book of the story you just watched. With all of the superhero comics and movies and their rabid fanbases, now is the perfect time to do something like Creepshow. I was floored that this all came together the way that it did… but it also made complete sense.

Greg’s other project, a little show named The Walking Dead, has gained a lot of notoriety and love from the fanbase for its tribute zombies. Would Creepshow the series be paying homage to the original film? Would Fluffy make a return? “It’s early but I can tell you that as long as we don’t get into any rights issues, I don’t see why we wouldn’t do something like that,” said Nicotero with a laugh and a bit of a devilish grin. “I have the original crate in fact… it still has all the blood painted on the side. Certainly my pedigree would be to resurrect certain aspects of those stories… maybe a continuation or even a prequel. Ed Harris will have to do the dance… that’s for sure.

My dream is to recreate that… that spirit… that George built. The living comic book is what it’s all about. I want to make sure that we can recreate the animation style and all that went with it. This is just really exciting. For our generation Creepshow was such an important movie. To be able to give people more of it is one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever been given.

Look for more on Shudder’s Creepshow soon!

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