Even if you look at the 'Paranormal Activity' movies, at the end of the movie things get really crazy and nutty, but they all start in a very mundane situation that people can relate to, and that's also to some degree what we tried to do in 'Chernobyl Diaries.

I don't know if I would say that I'm specifically a history buff. I do find a lot of things fascinating, especially anything that's bizarre or mysterious and unknown and we don't have all the answers for.

Gory stuff can be shocking but it doesn’t really scare me. I’d say the kind of stuff that gets under my skin is the unknown. You hear a knock behind a wall and you don’t know what it is. Is there something there or not?

I don't know. I think that horror, in general, is fairly popular. It's definitely popular in film. There's just not a lot of good horror on TV, so whenever there is good horror on TV, people rush to it.

I think the tricky balance, the most important thing more than the horror is to have a compelling story, compelling drama, a show about great characters that you care about and you want to come back every week to see what they're up to.

By trade, I am a software programmer, so I never really had any experience with movies before. I started out with 'Paranormal Activity.

Don't know if I'm a nerd - I'm more of a geek.