
Once we got into production and started to see how we were landing, I kind of felt that there was one that was actually perfectly suited, which was ‘Grey Matter,’ which is the story that I directed. Stephen had two different stories that he had proposed. What do you think?' And he's like, 'I got just the story!' Like, within twenty minutes. I actually wrote Stephen King and said, 'It can't be Creepshow without a Stephen King story. It was an opportunity that he jumped at, and one of the first people he contacted after was Stephen King: Engler revealed that the streaming service was in the process of putting together a Creepshow series, and he asked if Nicotero would be interested in a position as a creative executive. The writer was named Craig Engler, and Greg Nicotero was surprised to find out that he is the General Manager of Shudder… which happens to be owned and operated by AMC Networks (the same company that produces The Walking Dead). Despite the fact that he had spent more than half of the previous decade neck deep in zombie lore, Nicotero was so taken aback by one story that he decided to reach out to the author about making an adaptation.

According to an interview with SlashFilm, he was flying back from a trip to Australia and purchased an e-book copy of Nights Of The Living Dead: a collection of short stories all written to be concurrent with the events in George Romero’s classic Night Of The Living Dead.

Nicotero – whose King-related credits as a special makeup effects artist/supervisor include Creepshow 2, Tales From The Darkside: The Movie, Misery, The Green Mile, Desperation, and more – first became involved with the project while doing a press tour for The Walking Dead.
