I can tell you one thing. 75% of my Facebook friends were watching The Walking Dead on the AMC network on Sunday, October 14th. I read plenty a status message regarding the show. So, it comes as no surprise that the return of the popular series to the airwaves shattered a record.

According to the official press release celebrating the momentous occasion, The Walking Dead is safely being called the biggest show of the fall. That’s especially true for Adults, aged 18 to 49. When season three erupted onto AMC, season three’s premier out gunned both cable and broadcast hits alike, including Hatfields & McCoys, Jersey Shore, Modern Family, The Big Bang Theory and The Voice. Hey, Modern Family is a TV giant! This is a real achievement.

The 9pm premiere drew in 10.9 million viewers resulting in a new series king. The episode is now the highest rated in series history. It was also the biggest telecast for any drama series in basic cable history among all viewers. And listen to this. When The Walking Dead played an encore at 10pm, 3.5 million viewers tuned in. When it happened again at midnight, 850,000 viewers watched, making a grand total of 15.2 million viewers on a single night for the horror series.

The official byline for the show reads this way: In an uncertain world, Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and his band of survivors must not only fight the dead, but also face a whole new fear: the living.

Of course fans know that The Walking Dead is based upon the comic book series written by Robert Kirkman and published by Image Comics. The series features actors Lincoln, Sarah Wayne Callies, Laurie Holden, Steven Yeun, Norman Reedus, Chandler Riggs, Lauren Cohan, Scott Wilson, IronE Singleton, Melissa McBride, David Morrissey and Danai Gurira. It is executive produced by Glen Mazzara, Kirkman, Gale Anne Hurd and David Alpert with Greg Nicotero as co-executive producer.

I don’t know about your friends, but probably because a majority of mine live in the South, Norman Reedus’s Daryl Dixon is clearly a favorite.

The stars of your favorite brain-eating series are talking about the issues their characters are dealing with as season three of The Walking Dead sets to launch once again into the apocalyptic fray.

Lauren Cohan, who plays Maggie, had this to say:

What’s exciting for Maggie now is she’s still trying to find a sense of joy in what they’re doing and joy in the victory of finding a safe-hold or in taking out some walkers. She still stops to smell the roses when she can but it’s ruthless and violent. The group before was on the road but now she’s joined them on this and they’re much more overwhelmed with the amount of walkers. She’s still a farm girl at her core but she’s seen a lot of death.

Likewise, Norman Reedus, who is Daryl Dixon, shared:

With the turn of how things are going with the apocalypse, he’s opening himself up to people and being respected in other ways and finding reasons to fight for certain people and be apart of a group,” Reedus says. “It’s a big deal for him. With Shane being gone, there’s more responsibilities … but Daryl doesn’t want the responsibility of taking over a group, he’s just trying to fit in.

Change is inevitable, especially at the end of the world. The writers continue to keep Walking Dead interesting. Do you agree?

The Walking Dead returns Sunday, Oct. 14th at 9 p.m. on the AMC network.

Steven Yeun, who plays Glenn, has also discussed season three, explaining that life inside a prison is going to be especially claustrophobic, especially compared to last season’s adventures on the farm.

Last year, we were really happy with the fact that outside, the outdoors [at the farm] was really another character that helped us do these themes because we were miserable. We looked miserable, but in a good way. This season, we were thinking, ‘Oh man, once we go on stages, we’re gonna really have to act out certain things.’ But man, they did a great job and [the prison is] just as terrible as outside.

As for what’s next for his character, he added,

I think Glenn has a good gut. And the third season is him kind of putting that into action and realizing that he has people to protect, loved ones he has to live for. He can really trust his own decisions. That doesn’t come without consequences.

If you’re a fan of the bloody fantastic zombies depicted in the popular comic book inspired series, you’ll be thrilled to know there’s an opportunity to see them live and in the flesh. Okay, not exactly live; half alive, I guess, or is it half dead? They’ll be animated anyway. Universal Studios is developing a maze full of the flesh eaters. The attraction is aptly named “The Walking Dead: Dead Inside”, and will be the focus of Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights. The yearly celebration is well-known for putting visitors into their favorite horror stories. It sounds to me like the event just got even scarier.

Past Halloween Horror Nights have featured mazes revolving around Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Saw. This year, attractions based upon Silent Hill, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and more will be available for the brave of heart.

Speaking of October events and The Walking Dead, also in the news is anticipation over the debut of The Walking Dead Compendium, Volume 1 and Thief of Thieves Volume 1: I Quit, will both be released at New York Comic Con next month.

Early this past October, Kirkman confirmed that season 3 will be split into two halves with the first 8 episodes set to premiere on October 14, 2012, and the other 8 episodes to air in early spring 2013.

:::: Spoilers Ahead If You Haven’t Seen Season 2 (Obviously) :::: 

Season 2 saw it’s fair share of shocking twists. After the deaths of Dale and Shane, fans were a bit critical of the changes between the original comics and the massively popular AMC series. Now, we are almost to the premiere of the third season and the cast and producers of the series took a moment to talk about how the felt regarding the criticism of the series.

NORMAN REEDUS (Daryl Dixon)
“People are going say whatever they’re going to say anyway. If we killed a zillion zombies last season everyone would say, ‘There’s no storyline, they don’t talk enough.’ So f— ‘em! I’ve been trying to get into Game of Thrones. I can’t tell if it’s the future or the past, but those motherf—ers talk the whole time. Do I gotta bitch about it, or am I going to watch it and enjoy? I’m going to watch it and enjoy. People are going say whatever they say. You have to talk to tell a story. It’s not a cartoon. The pace this season is definitely amped up. We’re just talking faster.”

STEVEN YEUN (Glenn)
“You take it personal in a way because this is something that you’ve worked hard at — and as a group, as a collective, you feel like you put your blood, sweat and tears into this. But at the same time, you realize that the arts are subjective. You accept what they give you, and then subsequently laugh when they say, ‘I can’t wait for the next season.’ And you’re very thrilled and happy about that. We know how this plays out by virtue of us filming this. So for me, it was always just like: Wait for it; wait for it. There’s a plan; we’re all here. There’s a solid checks and balances system of not letting something go too far one way. It’s a beautiful group dynamic, and I think it’s a testament to the cast and crew and writers and producers; everybody has their gear that they work. We get it, we’re not perfect, and obviously, last season wasn’t perfect. But you tweak, you stay consistent as well. You hope that people come back and watch.”

SARAH WAYNE CALLIES (Lori Grimes)
“When it comes to a criticism of the pacing and stuff, I think when the show attains a certain level of visibility there’s going to be negative reviews, there’s going to be criticism, there’s going to be controversy. I think in a show like this, quite frankly, if we don’t engender a certain level of criticism and controversy, we’re probably not taking enough risks. I don’t know that I’d be comfortable if it were a show that everybody universally felt positively about. We shoot children in the face. I think the pace of the first half of the second season was a huge creative risk because it slowed down to the pace of a stage play instead of the pace of a horror movie. And I think that risk, in my mind, was absolutely worth it. The first season was so fast and so short. You got a chance to really invest in those characters and really explore them. I think that’s Frank’s genius as a writer — he’s not about what happens as much, in my opinion, as he is about who’s making it happen and why. Who cares about what happens to these people if we don’t know them deeply and intimately? I think those episodes were so important, and they’re also the springboard.”

ANDREW LINCOLN (Rick Grimes)
“I don’t watch the show, and I don’t read reviews. I stay out of the equation. All I knew is, I always had a sense that they wanted to play it out as a big movie. They always wanted to say that it’s a big story we’re telling and if you stick with it you will be rewarded. That was always Frank’s intention and Glen’s too. I shot it, so I was like, ‘I know what’s coming.’ I remember doing a lot of press for Spain, and Spain was going, ‘More Zombie.’ And I was like, ‘Please believe me, there is more zombie killing coming.’ Of course we want to get the balance right. We’re still learning what works and what doesn’t work. You can please some of the people some of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time. You can’t please all the people all the time. That’s just taste, and that’s cool. What I keep saying to people is that there is a very vocal, very extreme group of people that want a certain thing from this show. And they will watch this show. They will because it is extreme — more extreme than any f—ing thing I’ve ever been on. And the stuff we’re doing this season is out of the ballpark — it’s crazy what we’re doing this season.”

LAURIE HOLDEN (Andrea)
“It’s not a Glen Mazarra – Frank Darabont thing. It’s storytelling, and I think that, first of all, you can’t please everybody — there’s always going to be a hater. But it needed to develop slowly in the beginning for the story — to get to know the characters, to really set up the conflict so you could go quickly and just have this tornado of action. But it can’t be like that all the time. I think it all ended up the way that it was supposed to.”

ROBERT KIRKMAN (Exec producer)
“I know that we’re all very proud of season 2, and we’re very happy with how it turned out.  I think that once you see it all as a whole, you see how the first half — that some people said was slow — kind of built to a cool moment and really facilitated what happened in the later faster paced episodes.”

GALE ANNE HURD (Exec producer)
“It’s got to put it in perspective. The number of people who complain are so minor; it’s a small group that we tend to blow it out of proportion. If they were that unhappy, they would have tuned out. They would not have been around —since we had a split season — come February when we started up again. I think it’s everyone’s right to be able to complain, but for the most part we would not have had the investment in the characters — many of whom ended up not making it to the end of the season — if we hadn’t spent that time the first half of the season building up the character dynamic and getting to know them better.”

The third season of AMC’s “The Walking Dead” will premiere October 14th.