Moncton — City council was pleased to learn that part of the city core was chosen as the backdrop for one of the small screen’s biggest shows. City Manager Jaques Dubé explained that, “ hotels and local businesses should receive a boost in sales” as cast and crew from AMC’s The Walking Dead are set to film in the Hub City for their upcoming 6th season.
The show’s producers were thrilled with the prospect of filming in Moncton, saying that the natural state of the location and its residents will cut production costs. Filming is expected to take place in the area around St. George Street, High Street, Dufferin Street and the former Highfield Square location.
“We love this area,” said producer Gale Anne Hurd. “In Season 6 the characters — spoilers! — make their way to Detroit and we needed a location to stand in for that city; we found Moncton was the perfect substitute. We expect production costs to be much lower — the homes and buildings are the perfect backdrop for a zombie post-apocalypse show like ours.”
She went on to say that “the residents we spoke with in the area won’t require much for makeup or costumes — many of them look the part already. As great as we are at creating zombies, there’s no substitute for the real thing. The residents we spoke with have natural facial scabs and a perfect hollowed-out look that just can’t be duplicated.”
Executive producer Robert Kirkman went on to say, “When you have an entire city core so fitting to the show, you have to jump at the opportunity. There’s blocks of what we like to call ‘urban wasteland’; you can really picture Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) killing zombies at the Highfield Square site. We hope to cast locals as ‘walkers’ to save on time in the makeup chair.”
“Union rules for our extras keep us from asking the people who play the walkers to stick to an all-hotdog diet while filming, but in Moncton, they’ve done that for us.”
Moncton Ward 4 Coun. René “Pepsi” Landry feels that Moncton was chosen as it’s an officially bilingual city. “The producers have assured me the walkers will speak in both official languages,” he said. “We’ll provide translators for the writers so they can ensure the grunting and moaning noises the zombies make are done properly in French.”
The city plans to allocate $375,000 for translators in its next municipal budget, using money they’d originally saved for snow removal.