It'll never happen. If Kirkman pushed the issue (i'm assuming he owns all rights), I actually would go so far to say AMC would keep the show on air, sans Kirkman's blessing, and risk lawsuit in order to keep Daryl straight and the nearly 20 million viewers they get after Live+ numbers.

The Walking Dead has become a cultural phenomenon, not seen since The Sopranos, i'd argue. It's that big, despite the fact it frankly isn't that good of a show. I adored the show in Season 1, and slowly with each passing season the show has went further into the shitter, because either A) AMC makes bonehead decisions with Executive Producers [cough Frank Darabont cough cough], and/or B) the show has really crappy, unintelligent writers.

The comics honestly are overrated as well. The Walking Dead could've been an amazing show had it distanced itself from the comics from day one, and did it's own thing like Walking Dead meets Dawn of the Dead: The Series. The show moved too quickly, and although I still enjoyed the farmhouse angle in Season 2, since then they just don't move around enough. The characters are not all that interesting and the actors playing them were quite overrated.

I grew up a DIEHARD George Romero Dead-head. I ranked the original "trilogy" up there with anything Star Wars had to offer, and maintained that Romero was a lost genius. That is until he shit the bed x infinity with Land of the Dead. He reprieved himself a bit with Diary (a throwback Romero zombie flick for the modern age), and then shit it all up again with Survival of the Dead.

So I get "zombies". Way more than all these fucking posers today that dress up in military fatigues and drive around on lame zombie hunts with their friends.

Which brings me back to Daryl. Fuck Rick. Does AMC, Kirkman, and anybody with a fucking pulse believe that anyfuckingbody watches Walking Dead for fucking Rick? Daryl IS THE STAR OF THIS SHOW! I don't say that as a diehard fan, because I really don't even know if I care at all to sign up for the 5th Season of the show, as someone who has watched since the Pilot premiere, I think the show has declined that poorly. I say that as someone who totally gets what the draw is to this show. Zombies and Daryl. If Donald Pleasence was the heart & soul of the Halloween series, than Norman Reedus is the Donald Pleasence of Walking Dead.

Walking Dead might have an all audiences viewership. Walking Dead might be off the charts on all demos. Everybody might be circle-jerking to progressive writing. And believe me, I am THE FIRST GUY to tirade (have very recently) about Hollywood's "fake pandering" to the gay community with their "fake progess". A lead female that is gay is not 'progress'. It's not 1996. Sylvester Stallone frenching Arnold Schwarzenegger in Expendables... and it still working -- that's progress. I get it. I get being ballsy and pushing it.

But this is literally SUICIDE. Not Robin Williams, I have depression and early-Parkinson's and money issues life's a drag, we still love you Robin -- suicide. No it's not that suicide.

This is Chris Benoit drugging his son, killing his wife, spending a weekend in the house with their corpses, THEN hanging himself -- SUICIDE.

Making Daryl gay would bury AMC's biggest property -- EVER. It would literally kill the show. I would be stunned if Norman Reedus would even agree to play it. Norman Reedus has an even bigger future ahead of him because of this series, and Norman Reedus is becoming his own brand name. This would be a ripple effect that would hurt Reedus brand name as an actor. I'm very serious here. Reedus would go from the next big action star, to America's next reality TV host of "Hollywood's Tribute To Tom Savini" overnight.

Reedus is so big because of Daryl, that people have totally forgotton about The Boondock Saints, a cult legend in its own right. Reedus can't even walk down the streets of New York without being mobbed by hoardes of fans and paparazzi like he's Tom fucking Cruise circa 1998.

This would not only slit the throat of the series, overnight, it would replace Fonzi's "jumping the shark" to creating the word "Committing Homocide" in Webster's Dictionary's next edition.

Walking Dead's syndication property, for future reruns, would be perminately damaged costing countless millions of dollars.

In other words... there's nothing wrong with progress. There's nothing wrong with being gay. There's nothing wrong with having a gay character. BUT... when you take a beloved character, that is considered the star of the show, the reason people watch, BECAUSE of his redneck-ness. BECAUSE of his machismo. BECAUSE of his strong male persona. BECAUSE of his star power and on-screen charisma as that exact thing. And at the peak of this said show, flip course on the audience, flip the middle finger and do something with this character that IMMEDIATELY ALIENATES 75% of the audience, instantly, 65% of whom will send you death threats... to appeal to 1% of the American population.... wow. I'm all for progress, but this is just a plain bad idea. I would say even after that initial audience loss, he'd lose another 10-15% of the course of the next season, who would then throw in the towel because of the lack of popularity. Even if there were audience gains from the LGBT demo, it would be less than 2-3%.

Kirkman might never ever get work or street cred again. The media would never leave him alone about it. It would haunt him forever. He would get spit on on the streets as the person that ruined the best show of all time (not me saying this, but the diehards of his comics/series).

Again -- i'm being serious. This would be full blown Benoit-level suicide. Kirkman himself would probably nurse a bottle of Johnnie Walker and pop a gun in-and-out of his mouth to see if he's got the stones over the course of an evening. Plus, even if they went through with it, and even kept their audience for as many newbies that joined the show to root for Daryl, just as many former Daryl fans would root for his demise, and rooting for a gay man to die by mutilation from zombies because he's gay... that's even more not cool. Why bring that kind of negative energy from your casual fans. Just to bait them?

Still...

A) AMC would find someway to appease Kirkman, even if it was doubling, tripleling his royalties
B) If Kirkman was still a dick, AMC would find someway to circumvent Kirkman to keep the series on the air with Daryl straight
C) Syndicators, investors and others that have money in the brand would threaten Kirkman with being in court for the rest of his life facing lawsuits near a half-billion in total
D) Norman Reedus would never agree to play the role as a gay man. It would hurt Reedus' brand as being able to market himself for certain roles. He might gain respect as an actor/artist, but it would take any action/crime drama/sci-fi roles (his future bread & butter as a lead player) right off the table. It would be back to 10 years ago Norman Reedus eating peanut butter sandwiches and hoping for the next Boondock sequel, just cause Kirkman wanted to fuck his character in the ass (and yes, I feel a character is a 50/50 split between the original writer and the actor/actress who plays the role)

and E) I think AMC would cancel it. Yep. If the issue was forced, I think AMC would straight up cancel the series before they allowed it to happen. Better to cancel Walking Dead in it's prime, keep its brand strong, take that huge royalty money, pimp it out by other means, than continue it on bleeding money with a gay Daryl, and tons of public backlash.

This would be so bad, people would literally tune out of AMC, the network itself, because of the move. I think they'd pull the plug first. Then again... suits are stupid... so...

Again, i'm all for gay progress, but this would be literally be Kirkman's "Naggers" moment

He would never live it down...

Not sure if you meant Appetite For Democracy or were making a joke about AFD. I sure hope those rumors are untrue, because they are all unnecessary. Axl nails it, as does the band. Everyone involved should be VERY proud of themselves. #GNRBackOnTop

Like others said #1 is #1. Apparently Axl truely did have a problem with it, because it went from having a Blu-Ray/DVD/CD+DVD/Digital Video/MP3/Itunes release to having basically just a Blu-Ray/DVD release and nothing more. Even though who bought the Digital Video are being denied downloads of it, based on some DRM-bullshit.

Regardless... who cares. #1 is #1. The Blu-Ray kicked ten tons of ass. It was mixed beautifully. Axl sounds 95% awesome for a 2012 show, the band sounds great. And I was waiting for the Digital Audio release, and when they dragged their feet, I waited a couple days, then ripped the Blu-Ray audio in full perfect, HD lossless quality within minutes, and cut 256k MP3's and lossless CD audio out of it within minutes (and let me just say this sucker sounds BOMBASTIC on CD in a car stereo)

The current band finally got what they deserved after all these years. A HQ release that showcases what they are capable. Chinese, Jungle, Better, Estranged, This I Love, Catcher In The Rye, Don't Cry, KOHD, Patience.... all sound SOOOO good. The Seeker & Civil War are great too. Almost all of it is great, even the band solos.

It was really really cool in the summer of 2014 for the first time in eons to get excited about a Guns N' Roses official release. I just wish they would've put out a big elaborate CD release, or at least maybe they are gonna do a live CD release, and wait and do a different show. Maybe a show with Izzy or Duff? Either way, everything was done great but everyone on the list. The band, Axl, TB, RockFuel, the hot ass women in the video. All superb!!!

Loved it, and that AFDemocracy version of Don't Cry & Catcher is ALL FUCKING TIME!

Really cool to thrown on the MP3 playlist and hear Alice In Chains - The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here, Pearl Jam - Lightning Bolt, Whitesnake - Made In Britain... all these recently released things and then to hear something new from Guns N' Roses along with it...

Unfuckingreal

I think it's fascinating reading all those old quotes up there. I remember all of them now, reading them again, and alot of them vindicate the posts i've made in this thread. Especially considering Slash's irrationality when it came to continuing Guns in and what form Axl wanted to continue the band as.

For one, Slash statements about suddenly Pearl Jam becomes a big thing, suddenly Axl wants to be Pearl Jam. And I also believe in one of the Loder interviews, Axl cites Pearl Jam & Alice In Chains as influences during that period, and that's not counting his interviews 'in the moment' back in the day, where he was the biggest fan of Soundgarden & Nirvana around before they got really big. Slash himself basically admits that was the direction he wanted to take for the next Guns album.

He also confirms looking back what Axl's selection process was for replacing them all in Guns, and it shows that Axl was looking in the direction of both industrial rock & grunge rock as his musical direction for Guns, citing names such as Trent Reznor/NIN, Dave Navarro/Jane's Addiction, and Dave Grohl/Nirvana as all rolling around Axl's head as guys he wanted to record with, and the irony is the Reznor thing ended up being Robin Finck for a decade, and Dave Navarro is on Oh My God, isn't he? Plus Tom Zutaut says Axl bugged the hell out of him and the production staff on Chinese to get the drums to sound like Grohl's drumming on Nevermind, so much to the point that Zutaut stormed out of the studio, went and bought a copy of Nevermind and brought it back to the studio to try and duplicate Grohl's drum sound on Chinese.

Slash is absurdly unrealistic in his expectation that after UYI, and Axl's demand of basically turing to the band into the Stones on-stage (horn section/backup singers), and Queen off-stage (big theme parties, self-indulgence) that despite the audience's suddenly love for stripped down rock, and punk-infused grunge, that GN'R could somehow "gain their respect back" as a street rock band by doing a club show.

NO WAY the logistics would've ever worked for GN'R to have did a club tour in 1994/95. One, they were far too popular with too many hands in the cookie jar, and Two, it's Slash proving why Axl should've been handling business, 'cause it would've enormously damaged the GN'R brand at that time to go from doing stadiums, and selling out arenas with ease, to doing clubs. It would've been seen as GN'R in retreat from the grunge scene, and also shooting themselves in their own foot. God knows costs to do a North American club tour alone would've been the same output costs of the UYI tour with all the hangers on, but with a small fraction of the profit. Why sell 500 tickets in a major city, if you can sell 50,000 tickets?

Just doesn't make financial sense. I think at that point, even if just for a brief moment, it would've made more sense for Slash to shut his trap, go do MTV Unplugged by 1996 (at the latest), and debut an all acoustic style set similar to their GN'R Lies days, record it for release on CD and VHS, and maybe get James Hetfield & Lars Ulrich to special guest on a couple songs to add credibility that A) we're still Guns N' Fuckin' Roses, B) There is no bad blood with Metallica despite what the media says, and C) we have an MTV Unplugged performance that is just as good as anything Nirvana and Alice In Chains did. It wouldn't have hurt to debut an all-new song like Alice In Chains did, similar to an AIC Jar of Flies ballad and then release it as a single to promote the CD release, and make a video for it, as well as maybe Patience, Used To Love Her, and an acoustic version of Sweet Child O' Mine, and released all three as videos to promote the VHS.

It would've kept the old band on life support. It would've given them street cred still in an era when MTV Unplugged was enormously popular and great easy promo, and it would've given the fans some life support in a dark era in-between Spaghetti and Oh My God/Live Era (say if the band still would've broken up).

So I completely disagree with Slash there, and the fact that he nose-dived it at the time as some "fuck MTV", "fuck Grunge", "fuck Axl", statement.... in the end all he did was fuck his own fans and bury the band even more. I would much rather look back in 2014 and know I have a GN'R Unplugged performance, as one last appearence for the old band (similar to the end of Nirvana and Alice In Chains), then fucking nothing at all.

The fact that Slash turned around and performed with countless band members from Nirvana, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam years later, yet bashed Axl openly in the press for it, is even more ironic.

I stand by the fact that Slash talked SO MUCH FUCKING SHIT IN THE PRESS, too much to even count, and didn't leave it behind closed doors in the band, in the family, pissed Axl off even more and buried him with Axl forever and for that... I don't blame Axl one bit.

All those Slash interviews from the 90's would've made me hate his guts, especially the fact he talked shit to the press like a pussy, yet openly admitted he was scared to say it to Axl's face. If the band situation is THAT bad with the lead singer.... you don't have a band.

I doubt it was on purpose. Slash co-wrote it, and outside of GN'R (and even in GN'R) Richard tends to play a bluesy guitar.

Why have two dueling bluesy rock guitar leads? Slash can handle it himself or Richard himself. No need for two.

That's kind of why it irritates me with Axl and the three guitars thing. I get the whole, "I like Brian May guitar solos" thing Axl does on the ballads, which other than Brian, only Ron or Bucket tone-wise would handle.

But the reality of it is, Axl could fire DJ, Ron, & Richard, hire Doug Aldrich, and bring back Izzy.... and all guitar stuff would be handled. Doug could do DJ, Ron, & Richard's parts all by himself. Even the Buckethead stuff Slash couldn't or wouldn't do.

Not climbing up the Doug Aldrich tree again, i'm just saying there are other guitarists out there that could handle ALL the parts Axl wants handled. I don't know why, STILL, there are three guitarists. I get "in studio" for writing purposes, but on the road... it's getting especially crowded, especially when you see lead guitarists standing around NOT playing anything, so the others have their part.