Now this is pretty cool news coming from Variety, as we can now expect The Walking Dead to have small-screen life. Back in April we brought you word that AMC was close to sealing what was described as a “lucrative” deal to adapt the comic series, with no less than Frank Darabont (he of such awesome like The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and The Mist) attached to the project. That deal has now been given the green light by AMC, as the series published by Image Comics will get a pilot for the fandom’s perusal.
You can see by those credits that Darabont has extensive experience in bringing existing, popular, products to other mediums (he was also involved with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and an upcoming take on Bradbury’s iconic SF masterwork, Fahrenheit 451). The report comes with this description offered: “Walking Dead” revolves around a group of survivors, led by a police officer, who travel the country in search of a safe home. In our earlier post we brought you what Joel Stillerman, AMC’s Senior Vice President of Programming said about the title (that’s a bit more useful), “This is not about zombies popping out of closets. This is a story about survival, and the dynamics of what happens when a group is forced to survive under these circumstances. The world (in ‘Walking Dead’) is portrayed in a smart, sophisticated way.”
As much as I was underwhelmed by my own personal experience with the first trade of The Walking Dead , the otherwise seemingly universally popular (relative to a non-Big II comics) series, I am very excited to see it play out on television, especially with the initial name(s) behind it, and coming from the channel that has recently brought us high production value that we can see in Mad Men. My reasoning is two fold, I think what I read can be more interesting on-screen and I like the idea of a comic book related option announcement (and in this case green light) of a series that actually has quality and established word of mouth as a comic book, and not these pretty banal announcements of options of books that I – a lifelong fan and buyer in the medium – have never even heard of (a lot of times because issues aren’t even out), and from publishers that seem to go up the same day they get optioned (and many times never heard from again).
Synopsis for The Walking Dead Vol I; pictured below, however, is the The Walking Dead Compendium Volume 1 – An epidemic of apocalyptic proportions has swept the globe, causing the dead to rise and feed on the living. In a matter of months, society has crumbled: There is no government, no grocery stores, no mail delivery, no cable TV. Rick Grimes finds himself one of the few survivors in this terrifying future. A couple months ago he was a small town cop who had never fired a shot and only ever saw one dead body. Separated from his family, he must now sort through all the death and confusion to try and find his wife and son. In a world ruled by the dead, we are forced to finally begin living.
