THE WALKING DEAD Renewed For Season 8

Days before the highly anticipated season seven premiere of “The Walking Dead,” AMC announced that the series, the #1 show on television among adults 18-49 for the last four years, had been renewed for an eighth season, premiering in late-2017 and kicking off with the 100th episode of the franchise. All 16 episodes of “The Walking Dead” season eight will be followed by “Talking Dead,” the live aftershow hosted by Chris Hardwick, which is the highest-rated talk show on television and #2 show on cable, behind “The Walking Dead.”

The season eight renewal was announced through a special on-screen message at the beginning of tonight’s two-hour retrospective special, “The Walking Dead: The Journey So Far.” The seventh season of “The Walking Dead” premieres next Sunday at 9 p.m., followed by an expanded 90-minute episode of Talking Dead live from the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, featuring Hardwick, the cast members in Negan’s line-up, and Lucille.

“Eeny, meeny, miny, more,” said Charlie Collier, president of AMC, SundanceTV and AMC Studios. “What a joy to partner with Robert Kirkman, Scott M. Gimple and some of the hardest-working people in television to bring ‘The Walking Dead’ to the fans. And, most important, thanks to those fans for breathing life into this remarkable series right along with us.”

An AMC Studios production, “The Walking Dead” is executive produced by Gimple, Kirkman, Gale Anne Hurd, David Alpert, Greg Nicotero, and Tom Luse.