Steven Yeun gets a breakout role in action movie

Stephen Yeun is one of the few Asian/Americans
to grace the cover of a U.S. magazine.

SPOILER ALERT! 'Walking Dead' fans who don't want to know what might happen in the next few episodes should stop reading now!

GOOD NEWS: Steven Yeun has signed on to star in the motion picture Mayhem. 

BAD NEWS: Does this mean he has more time because his character Glenn Rhee might have been killed on in The Walking Dead?

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Yeun will be the male lead in Mayhem opposite Australian actress Samara Weaving.

Mayhem is scheduled to begin filming in Serbia later this month and will likely be released in some form in 2017.

The finale for TWD has already been taped and all the actors have been saying that it was one of the toughest episodes to do emotionally, indicating that one of the core group of survivors is going to meet his or her end.

Both Andrew Lincoln (Rick) and Lauren Cohan (Maggie) said they felt so sick with the fate of one of their castmates that it was difficult to drag themselves to work on the final day.

There has been wide speculation that it would be Glenn, apparently the only Asian/American survivor in the zombie apocalypse. Some say that the producers are making Glenn's supposed fate too obvious. He was the first to see the photographs of Negan's victims' bashed heads; a not too subtle foreshadowing of what may come.

Fans point out that the show always does an episode fleshing out a character prior to their ultimate death. That's bad news for Carol, the abuse victim turned badass survivor to someone unwilling to kill anymore.

RELATED: The rest of The Walking Dead's episodes are going to be brutal

But, don't forget Maggie, Glenn's wife, who in a previous episode told Glenn, "I can't do this anymore," after killing her captors. If she dies, it would be equally devastating for TWD fans since she is the last of her family and Glenn's reason for living.

The totally unexpected death of Dr. Denise, excellently portrayed by actress Meredith Wever, has thrown comic book followers off-balance. She was shot through the eye with a crossbow arrow, the same death that was supposed to befall red-head Abraham. But he still lives.

The fact that Abraham is still alive demonstrates that the show runners are not afraid to go off-script, which might be good news for Glenn fans, but that also puts the fate of other characters up in the air.

Yeun's casting in Mayhem will present a rare situation in Hollywood. He'll be that rare creature - an Asian/American leading man in a U.S.-made motion picture. Let's hope its a harbinger of things to come.

Yeun will play Derek Sanders (don't be surprised if the character's name gets changed to reflect Yeun's Korean/American heritage). Sanders gets fired and on the same day, a virus breaks out that allows people to act out their wildest impulses. He is trapped in a quarantined building and has to fight for his job, fight for survival and escape. Pretty bad day at the office, I'd say. Think Die Hard meets Walking Dead. Right up Yeun's alley.

It will be Yeun's biggest role to date outside of Walking Dead and could be a breakout role commercially for the actor, who is being primed as an Everyman's action-hero - a role he's had plenty of experience playing.

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For more news about Asian/Americans & Pacific Islanders, read AsAm News.

The rest of The Walking Dead's season is going to be brutal and 'sickening'

Steven Yeun plays Glenn to Lauren Cohan's Maggie. Everybody's favorite couple recently learned that they were going to be parents on the 'Walking Dead' TV drama.

SPOILER ALERT. DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU'RE A "WALKING DEAD" FAN AND DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHAT'S COMING. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!

Last chance STOP reading ... OK, here we go ...

HERE WE GO AGAIN. What the Walking Dead does better than anybody else is to have fans invest themselves in the show's characters and their fate on one of television's best loved, best acted, best written dramas.

Besides Game of Thrones, no other television show has shown its willingness to kill off their main characters than The Walking Dead.

For those of you who sighed a breath of relief when Glenn survived falling into a herd of zombies last season, get ready to get back on that emotional rollercoaster. We're almost ready to experience the death of one of the show's main characters.

In past deaths of fictional characters, we are stunned, surprised and go through all the stages of real-life grieving whenever one of the core group of survivors meets his or her demise, as if they were real people.

In fact, studies show that fictional characters that are loved actually become our friends and our feelings towards them are real, as if they are actual people. When they hurt, we hurt; when they're happy, we're happy; when they die, we grieve. The characters may be fictional, but the emotions are real.

We're in Season 6 of the show that takes place in the near future and everyone - except for small bands of survivors - have turned into the undead zombies.

If you follow the comic book, the source material for the Walking Dead, you know that the villain of villains, Negan, is about to be introduced and with him, his barb-wire wrapped  baseball bat that he calls Lucille. You'll also know that Negan uses Lucille to bash in Glenn's head.

Oh, no! Not Glenn again! Why are the show runners always putting the Asian guy in peril? 

If the show runners stick to the comics, Glenn - the only Asian survivor in the zombie apocalypse that we know of; Glenn, the nice guy who gets the girl; Glenn, the pizza delivery guy who has turned into a hardened badass; Glenn, who always sees the good in people, even if they are losers; Glenn, who had never killed a human being (until last week's show.) Our Glenn. Our hero. His time has come. 

Reports that Steven Yeun, who plays Glenn has cancelled an appearance at a fans'  event after this season's finale only lends credence to Glenn's fate. The only other time Yeun missed a fan event was when everybody was asking if his character had died.

Hey, hasn't anyone over at Walking Dead read the USC report about the lack of significant Asian characters on television? Don't kill off the one character with whom we in this under-represented demographic identify!

But ...

The show runners haven't always been faithful to the comics for their plotlines. If they had, Carol and Daryl, both of whom have large fanbases, would have been killed off in the first season.

Will they veer from the comics again? Let's hope so.

Daryl, Carol, Abraham, Gabriel, even Glenn's wife Maggie, who's pregnant, have all been mentioned as possible substitutes for Glenn. 

In the past, the writers have always tried to fill in a character's personality before doing away them. Just as we're starting to know them, we lose them. So if a character is getting more airtime than usual, you can be sure their time on the show is coming to an end. That makes their deaths so much more heartbreaking. This season the writers have filled in the backstories with Fr. Gabriel, Abraham and Morgan. I would be worried if I was an actor playing one of those roles.

That would be just like the show's writers to torture the fans and also to hype fan involvement; build up hope and then pull the rug out from under the fans' feet..

All we're sure of is that someone in the main crew will fall victim to Negan's wrath. Both  Andrew Lincoln (Rick) and Lauren Cohan (Maggie) said the remainder of the season is going to be brutal. "Sickening" is the term they used.

So, Walking Dead fans, get ready to get your hearts ripped out and stomped on.

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For more news about Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, read AsAm News.

Glenn lives - for now

The old hiding-under-the-dumpster trick saves Glenn's life.

WHEW! You can all exhale now. That was a close one. It took four episodes but we finally know that our Asian/American hero, Glenn Rhee, (Stephen Yeun) survived. As many of you surmised, Glenn slipped under the dumpster to escape the hungry zombies. The guts we saw being eaten by the undead were the intestines of Nicholas.

That meant four weeks of agony, speculation and grief counseling.

As we breathe a sigh of relief, it may be only a temporary reprieve. Followers of the comic books know that Negan, one of the show's worst villains is about to be introduced. 

STOP READING RIGHT HERE. SPOILER AHEAD!

In the comic book, Negan kills Glenn by bashing his head in with a baseball bat. Is that that be the same fate of the TV show's Glenn? Let's hope not. 

The television show has diverted from the comic book plot several times in the past and has allowed characters live on that were killed off in the pulp version. i.e.. Carol and 

Daryl. 

Besides, he is one of the few genuinely good guys in the show. His wife Maggie is pregnant. Their family represents hope in a bleak world without hope.  "We're not supposed to let the world die," he says in the latest episode.

Besides, Glenn may be the only Asian/American left on the entire planet. Really! In the six seasons of the show, he has been the only one! 

Which gives rise to the far-out theory that Asians may be genetically immune to the zombie disease and are all hiding out somewhere. I don't think very highly about that theory, but anything is possible.

All the other characters are flawed to varying degrees. In a way, even though they are alive, they've become ... the walking dead. 

All you social networkers out there, keep Tweeting, texting, emailing the show. #SaveGlenn, #KeepGlennAlive, #PizzaForAll

UPDATE (NOV. 23): I really need to commend the Walking Dead writers and producers for creating a true interactive experience between the show and its audience. The grief, confusion and speculation came through the TV screen to give us fans a roller-coaster ride of emotions, the like I have rarely experienced.

Shortly after his appearance in "Talking Dead," Steven Yeun's Twitter account was reactivated.

“It proves this world can take the story of the good guy winning sometimes,” The Walking Dead’s Steven Yeun told Talking Dead tonight of the reaction of the seemingly apparent death of his Glenn Rhee character on October 25’s show. As fans of the AMC series learned tonight on the penultimate episode of 2015, Yeun’s Glenn is not dead.

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Sunny & Glenn: Asian/American heroic characters dominate Sunday TV,

TONIGHT (Nov. 22) will be the second episode of Into the Badlands, a tale in a dystopian America where the country is divided into 7 fiefdoms ruled by powerful barons.

The opening fight sequence starring Asian/American Daniel Wu is one of the best I've seen as a fan of martial arts films and a follower of the samurai films of Akira Kurosawa. It is just so cool.

If that doesn't make you want to watch AMC's 6-episode series first season, I don't know what will.

Wu 's character, Sunny, may have started out as the stereotypical strong, silent type, a staple of these types of stories, but as the first episode demonstrates, the writers are making an attempt to tell his back-story to explain why he is the way he is.

I realize that this type of show is not for everyone. It's just for fun and we need a little bit of escape from the real world, full of violence, wars, ignorance and terrorism.

Meanwhile, back to the Walking Dead ...

WARNING: Spoilers ahead ...

WHAT THE HECK? The producers of the Walking Dead continue to tease us about fan favorite Glenn Rhee, played by Stephen Yeun.

The last time we see Glenn, we see him trying to avoid being lunch for a herd of zombies. Since that time, fans have been going crazy speculating about his fate. This is another strong prediction.

The general consensus from a variety of sources seems to indicate that he somehow survives (don't ask me how!), 

The question becomes, when will the producers reveal that he's still alive? And if he's alive, is it only a brief respite before his life is in danger again. That depends on whether or not the producers deviate from the comic book storyline, which they have done several times. #SaveGlenn, #KeepGlennAlive

Stephen Yeun plays fan favorite Glenn Rhee.

Most likely, we won't know the answer tonight. The producers need something to draw in fans for the mid-season finale next week. Or, the sneaky creators may decide to withhold the answer until the next February when the series returns.(Curses, on them!)

As the lone Asian survivor of the zombie apocalypse,  we have more than a passing interest in Glenn's story. Not only has he evolved from a pizza delivery guy to a out-and-out badass, his character is one of the very few who has not killed a human being maintaining his own humanity in the show's bleak environment, he is one of the few Asian male to actually get the girl. 

Will the producers throw all that away simply to make a dramatic point? Or, will another one of the characters take Glenn's place when the show introduces villain Negan, the leader of the Wolves, who disposes of Glenn in the comics in a most horrific way? 

Like zombies, fans will continue to tune in to follow the survivors and suffer the highs-and-lows with their favorite characters.

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Walking Dead: Is Glenn dead or alive?

Glenn Rhee played by Stephen Yuen will be back, but in what form?

WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD!

THE FATE of Glenn Rhee is driving fans of The Walking Dead crazy. Is good guy Glenn  who has never killed a living human being, who has transformed from a pizza-delivery guy to action hero, dead or alive?

You know what they say about nice guys.

The producers and writers are clearly playing with the audience's emotions for the last two weeks since we saw everybody's favorite Asian/American survivor of the zombie apocalypse fall off a dumpster into a horde of zombies. The last scene of Glenn screaming and zombies ripping out intestines is ... uh ... gut-wrenching keeps playing over and over in our minds.

Last week as we tuned in a special 90-minute episode expecting to find an answer, we get an episode about Morgan's backstory and his "Yoda." Most aggravating, though, acute observers noted that the credits for the the actor Stephen Yuen, who plays Glenn, were left out!

Last week, the producers stirred up more questions when they felt it necessary to issue a note to viewers of Talking Dead, the show dedicated to the Walking Dead goings-on, reassuring fans that we had not seen the last of Glenn.

So much angst and speculation has been put forth by fan and TV reviewers, the producers and probably laughing and rubbing their hands with glee with all the interest being generated.

"I think it's fun to allow people to speculate on it. There will be some resolution to the debate. I can't wait for that moment because it'll be very intriguing," said executive producer Greg Nicotero. Yeah, right! Nicotero probably tortured his pets when he was a kid.

Here's a new promo about tonight's episode:

Is tonight's episode (Nov. 8) going to provide an answer? I wouldn't be surprised if the creators keep the audience guessing as long a they can. 

UPDATE (Nov. 9): As expected, the Nov. 8 episode of The Walking Dead didn't provide any answers. The producers have left us hanging again and again, we'll probably tune in next week to see if Glenn is alive. In case you need reminding, here is that infamous scene:

SHOCKER! Did Glenn just die on 'Walking Dead?'

Warning, warning, warning! Another spoiler! Do not proceed if you haven't seen Episode 3, "Thank you" of Season 6 of The Walking Dead.

The last time we saw Glenn ...

I'M STUNNED! I'm at a loss of words. I'm in denial.

Did Glenn - the only Asian/American survivor of the zombie apocalypse just die on the popular television show The Walking Dead?

The last image we have from last Sunday's episode 3 is Glenn screaming with zombies gorging on what appears to be our hero's intestines. It was ... well, gut wrenching. 

Glenn, as portrayed by actor Stephen Yeun, is "everyman." He was a nerd who has transformed into an action hero. He, and his wife Maggie, reminded the viewers that a trace of humanity and hope remained in the world inhabited by zombies. He believed in giving people (even those who tried to kill him) a second chance. He, of all the characters of Walking Dead, kept his humanity and never killed anyone (not counting zombies.) Never!

But ... here I am talking about Glenn in the past tense. There's some ambiguity. In the Talking Dead, which normally follows the show, they traditionally show all the characters that die on the Walking Dead. The segment is called "In Memoriam." Conspicuously absent was any mention of Glenn. To me, that is a huge oversight. Every other character who has been killed off received a lingering last "so-long" photo "In Memorium:"

Adding to the confusion, the producers felt the need to issue this statement to Talking Dead viewers:

“Dear fans of The Walking Dead, this is a hard story to tell and when we were planning to tell we knew our friends at the Talking Dead would be talking to you about it and knowing you’d all be talking, and feeling and commiserating, I knew we should say something about it lest our silence say something we didn’t mean to say or not say. So I’ll say this: In some way, we will see Glenn, some version of Glenn or parts of Glenn again, either in flashback or in the current story to help complete the story.”

Die-hard fans based in Georgia where the show is taped have sent out photos showing Yeun on the set, in costume, weeks after last week's episode was shot. Are they shooting flashback scenes? Or, did Glenn somehow survive the bloody ordeal.

So what happened? A dream, a hallucination? The character who was with Glenn in his apparent last battle killed himself and Glenn, being the good guy he is, tried to keep him from falling into the zombie abyss. Unfortunately, the momentum took Glenn down, too. How could our hero survive this? Did the other character fall on top of Glenn and that's his guts we see the zombies eating?

Or, are the writers just toying with our emotions? Is he dead? We don't know. Rumors of the character's death has been circulating for two seasons.

Tune in next week, which is a 90-minute episode, when poor Maggie hears the bad/good news. Is it too late to mount a #SaveGlenn movement?

UPDATE: The 90-minute episode didn't provide any answers. We have to wait another week to find out what happened to Glenn.

The Walking Dead: Oh, no! What if Glenn dies ...?

Maggie and Glenn, played by Lauren Cohen and Stephen Yeun in the TV series The Walking Dead.

WARNING: "Walking Dead" fans - SPOILER AHEAD! Do not read any further if you don't want to know what might happen in future episodes.

DON'T SAY you weren't warned:

As we delve deeper into season 6 of The Walking Dead, there's a feeling of dread for fans of Asian/American character Glenn Rhee.

Six months ago at a press conference after season 5 ended for the wildly popular Walking Dead television series, actor Stephen Yeun, who plays Glenn in the show, teased the possibility that his character might die, a fate that could have his fans go apoplectic.

Yeun's comments during a panel of the 2015 National Association of Broadcasters Show panel held in April, fed fuel to the rumors that his character would meet his end during the upcoming season of the popular series of the zombie apocalypse.

Comic book readers may be smug because they knew all along about Glenn's fate if the TV series followed the comic book storyline.

Asked a leading question (probably from a comic book fan): Yeun answered, "If I go — that could happen. The way that we make the show — the writers and everybody really want to focus on making things poignant and purposeful and meaningful. ... So, if it were for Glenn to go, then it’s probably going to be awesome."

What sparked the question is the rumored introduction of Negan, the villainous character who savagely - I mean, savagely - murders our hero Glenn ... in the comic book version, at least.

I only mention this because the television show has veered from the comic's storyline, most notably in keeping the popular character Norman around, who is absent in the comics and having other characters suffer the death scenes meant for other comic book characters. Also, the major character Carol commits suicide early on in the comic book version of The Walking Dead. But on the TV show, she's still around and evolved into a hardened bad-ass survivor.

Then again, the TV show has not been bashful in killing off major characters, sometimes shocking the audience into therapy - as if a real person died. Indeed, when we invest so much in watching a character grow, his ups and downs, it sometimes feel like a friend passes away when TV characters go to that backstage-in-the-sky.

If fan favorite Glenn were to die - and I said "IF" - he apparently is/was the only Asian/American to have survived the zombie apocalypse. As a die-hard fan, I have not seen another Asian/American character in the show. Glenn's probable death would pretty much decimate the "model minority myth."

The character Glenn, incidentally, has made history in a way as he has turned into a romantic lead with his interracial relationship with Maggie, played by Lauren Cohan. Their love for each other is the only sweetness and sign of hope in a show full of blood and foreboding.  The writers have also hinted that Maggie may be with child. They wouldn't kill off the baby's father, would they? Or, wouldn't that be the perfect emotional setup for Glenn's heartbreaking demise?

How fair is that? Finally, Asian/American pop-culture fans see an Asian/American male get the girl -- something that never happens, you know, -- but, only to have him killed???

I suppose if you bothered to read this far and if you are a die-hard Glenn & Maggie fan, you can start a Twitter campaign to save Glenn

Or, there's a Facebook page to Save Glenn.

Or make sure creator Robert Kirkham and producer Gale Ann Hurd know the socio-historic importance Glenn has become, way beyond the television show. 

Save Glenn!

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