'Walking Dead' Record Prompts Zombie Apocalypse: 12.3 Million Infected (VIDEO)
The zombie apocalypse has arrived, infecting over 12 million viewers on Sunday who tuned in to watch the mid-season premiere of "The Walking Dead."
The AMC network is to blame for millions of fans becoming intoxicated by zombie fever. An estimated 12.3 million viewers tuned in on Sunday to watch a new episode of "The Walking Dead," which featured countless flesh-eating zombies, known in the show as "walkers" or "biters."
Young people appear the most susceptible to this flesh-eating addiction. 7.7 million viewers came from the 18-49 demographic, Nielsen reported. Those numbers are a record for that age group.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
Running with the show's success, AMC will now begin airing reruns of the zombie series in black and white. Remnant of George A. Romero's 1968 black-and-white horror classic "Night of the Living Dead," the reruns will begin airing on Thursday- it's the same day unscripted programs run, with executives hoping the zombie contagion might spread to other shows.
The black and white series will pay tribute to the comic series, also called "The Walking Dead," on which the television series was based. The comics were first introduced as a weekly black and white series in 2003. They were created by writer Robert Kirkman and artist Tony Moore who was later replaced by Charlie Adlard.
"It's rare for a TV show to create such a palpable level of tension as The Walking Dead does every week," one fan of the show wrote on a Huffington Post blog. "Some episodes are almost physically stressful to watch."
"Really good point!" a second user added. "I love that tension. This is my favorite show in years."
So good in fact, that many fans have suggested that they could handle a whole lot more.
"Almost makes me wish it had a two hour format," a third fan intoned.
