The Walking Dead has returned for season eight with a premiere episode that also doubled as the US drama's 100th ever episode (our full review is in).

Viewers will have noticed that the episode was 'in loving memory' of two people - stuntman John Bernecker (more on him here) and Night of the Living Dead filmmaker George Romero, the man attributed with pioneering the zombie genre.

While Romero's influence on the series is plain to see (every single film and TV show to have ever featured a zombie has undoubtedly been inspired by the maestro), he was very candid about his views on The Walking Dead ahead of his passing in July 2017.

In fact, Romero blamed The Walking Dead for the fact it made it increasingly difficult for him to acquire funding for new sequels to Dawn of the Dead (1978), Day of the Dead (1985) and, more recently, Land of the Dead (2005).

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In an interview with IndieWire before his death, Romero said: “Because of World War Z and The Walking Dead, I can’t pitch a modest little zombie film, which is meant to be sociopolitical. I used to be able to pitch them on the basis of the zombie action, and I could hide the message inside that. Now, you can’t.

Romero continued: "I had a sequel. I was ready to shoot. In 2007, Diary of the Dead all of a sudden made money. I was blindsided by that. One of the producers said, ‘Let’s make another one quick.’ I didn’t know what else I could talk about. Diary of the Dead talked about how social media is haunting us today. I didn’t have anything else to talk about.

Hollywood legends Martin Landau and George Romero both die

"So I decided to go back to the original premise of misunderstanding and people not being able to see each other’s point of view. I said I’ll do this one as a western and the next one as a noir. So did the western, nobody liked it, and the other one fell away.

"Then, all of a sudden, here came The Walking Dead. So you couldn’t [have] a zombie film that had any sort of substance. It had to be a zombie film with just zombies wreaking havoc. That’s not what I’m about."

Despite this, showrunner Scott Gimple told Entertainment Weekly: "The debt that the show has to Mr. Romero - everybody sort of thought about it at the same time. Everybody felt the same way at the same time instantly. The show owes a great debt to him and popular culture owes a great debt to him."

The Walking Dead season eight airs 22 October in the US on AMC with the UK premiere arriving the following evening (Monday 23 October) at 9pm on FOX and NOW TV