Lights, Camera, Massacre: Jeffrey Dean Morgan Reveals When 'The Walking Dead' Starts Shooting Again

It is batter up for AMC's #TheWalkingDead when it returns later this year, while the climactic season finale told us that the worst is yet to come. Although the hotly anticipated eighth season is still months away, the little trickle of news will help us forget the agonizing wait over the summer and quench our #zombie appetite.

One man who certainly seems in it for the long run is #JeffreyDeanMorgan's Negan, the leather-clad asshole who we love to hate. However, even the show's Public Enemy No. 1 is left relatively in the dark about where the show will go next. However, he already promised that the show will come back swinging, but now he has revealed that we are just days away from starting filming — better fetch the body bags.

War is on the horizon.

Speaking at the Walker Stalker Convention in San Francisco on April 15, Morgan told the panel, "We start shooting in 10 days." This means that work on Season 8 should be scheduled to start on April 25. It is good news for fans of the show, as with shooting due to start so soon, it means it won't be long before those ravenous spoiler hounds will be letting us know what is going on over in Atlanta.

While he played dumb on what will be going on and who else will return, Jeffrey did the usual casting tease that everyone always does, and threw his character's fate up in the air:

"I haven't seen the scripts. I might be dead. Norman Reedus might be dead."

Pull the other one, Jeffrey, we all know Negan will be sticking around for a lot longer.

Swing And A Miss

However, let's not get too ahead of ourselves because the wait till October could get a hell of a lot longer. The Walking Dead is on the cusp of being stopped dead in its tracks if the planned writers strike goes ahead in America. Negotiations between the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers broke down over equal pay for writers, meaning that a strike is planned for May 2 unless an agreement can be reached. Some shows are stockpiling scripts, ordering emergency re-writes, or just facing the inevitable. So yeah, Jeffrey, maybe pack a little lighter this year, it could be a short trip!

Surely a show as big as The Walking Dead will have a contingency, but as of yet, AMC is remaining tight-lipped on how the strike could affect its shows. When the show does return, it is expected to tackle the "All Out War" storyline, especially considering that Season 7 laid the groundwork for up to about Issue #114 of #RobertKirman's #comicbook source material. That means that Season 8 will presumably tackle Issues #115–#130, the "All Out War" battle, and its aftermath.

With Season 7 being heavy on main cast departures, don't expect Season 8 to let up on the bloodshed. #ScottGimple's show differs dramatically from the comic books, meaning that literally anyone can die at any time. With non-comic creations like Daryl and Jadis featuring heavily in the show, all bets are off. Who knows, maybe Jeffrey is right and Negan could be killed off in 8x01 — maybe, but definitely not.

In the meantime, we are left on tenterhooks until the writer negotiations resolve themselves. If the strike does go ahead, it could mirror the 2007–2008 strike and we could be facing our own dystopian zombie apocalypse by the time The Walking Dead returns to our screens.