AMC's "The Walking Dead" *5 Minute Preview*

[JamesG]

Breaking News: Frank Darabont Resurrects The Walking Dead at AMC!
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
By: MrDisgusting

I'm so happy right now, I think I might cry. Have you read Image Comics' The Walking Dead yet? No? Do you live under a rock? It's too expensive you say? You sit at a Barnes and Nobles and read it there. No excuses allowed here fellas, it's time to go forth and read Robert Kirkman's comic masterpiece that's finally making its move to live-action.

While I expected to see this land at HBO or Showtime, AMC has landed the property and attached filmmaking guru Frank Darabont (The Mist, The Green Mile, The Shawshank Redemption) to write and direct the series. What could be better? Seriously, nothing could be better. NOTHING. Read on for all the fine print.



AMC is venturing into zombie-drama territory with multi-hyphenate Frank Darabont.

Cable is close to finalizing one of the richest development deals ever with Darabont to write and direct a series adaptation of the Image Comics graphic novel series "The Walking Dead," penned by Robert Kirkman. Gale Anne Hurd of Valhalla Pictures and David Alpert of Circle of Confusion are also on board to exec produce.

The project is set among a group of zombie survivors of an apocalypse who are led by a police officer, Rick Grimes, in search of a safe place to live. What makes this comic special is that it's about the survivors and NOT about the zombies.



Numerous editions of the "Walking Dead" graphic novels have been published since 2003.

Joel Stillerman, AMC's senior veep of programming, production and original content, said the project appealed to the cabler because of "the quality of the storytelling" in Kirkman's work. The series will stay faithful to the tone of the original novels, he said.

"This is not about zombies popping out of closets," Stillerman said. "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."

Stillerman noted that the cabler's annual "Fear Fest" movie showcase around Halloween is one of AMC's most popular programming events of the year.

"We've got an audience that loves this kind of material," he said.



Darabont and Hurd pitched the project to AMC and several other outlets. There is no studio attached yet. The duo's involvement made the project a must-have for the cabler, Stillerman said.

"These are two world-class filmmakers who are also brilliant storytellers with experience in the fantasy genre," he said.

Hands down, best. news. of. the. year. DON'T F*CK THIS UP.

http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/17047

[JamesG]

Kirkman Talks AMC's Walking Dead Series
Source: MTV
September 30, 2009

When AMC teamed with Frank Darabont (The Mist) to develop a television series out of Robert Kirkman's "The Walking Dead," it instantly became a "most anticipated" project.

Kirkman will serve as an executive producer on the series while Darabont will write and direct for producers Gale Anne Hurd (a genre vet, look 'er up) of Valhalla Motion Pictures and David Alpert of Circle of Confusion.


"I've told Frank flat-out that I do not want him to follow the comic to the detriment of the show," Kirkman tells MTV in a recent interview.

"I encourage him to veer off if he has something that will work really well on TV that wouldn't work in a comic. I don't want people who enjoy the comic to be watching the TV show and going, 'Oh, this is leading to that one thing I already know about from the comic.' I think it will be 100-percent true to the tone of the series, but at the same time it will be an entertaining, secondary way of experiencing 'The Walking Dead' in a completely different light, so I'm excited."


Again, so are we. But are you nervous that AMC might temper some of the nastier moments (the zombie stuff)? Don't worry, so far the only thing they're concerned about is Darabont's use of the "F bomb" in his scripts.

http://www.shocktillyoudrop.com/news...s.php?id=12060

[JamesG]

Green Light Means Go for The Walking Dead!
Source: Variety
January 20, 2010

"Exciting times." So says "The Walking Dead" creator Robert Kirkman on his Twitter account. Why?

AMC just gave the green light to the television adaptation of "The Walking Dead"! This means Frank Darabont will be moving behind the camera soon to direct the pilot he penned.



Darabont was attached to the property last summer. Genre lover and producer Gale Anne Hurd is overseeing the series with Circle of Confusion.

If all goes according to plan, Darabont may be neck-deep in the undead this spring or summer telling the story of Rick Grimes, a cop who awakens in a hospital one day to find zombies have overrun the world.


Can't wait to see what he does...

http://www.shocktillyoudrop.com/news...s.php?id=13750

[JamesG]

Exclusive: A review of the pilot script for The Walking Dead TV series
Posted by Patrick Sauriol
Sunday, January 24, 2010

Is there such a thing as having too much dead people in your entertainment quota?

The answer to that question will only be known if AMC decides to give a greenlight to a TV series based on Robert Kirkman's ongoing comic book series about life after the zombie apocalypse, The Walking Dead.



If you haven't been paying attention, the 2000s saw the zombie finally rise to mainstream status with a horde of well-received movies in this monster genre: the Resident Evil films (with a fourth now in production); a remake of Dawn of the Dead; 28 Days Later and its sequel which gave the idea of a slow moving corpse a twist with its fast runners; zombie comedies Zombieland and Fido; and the return of the father of modern zombie cinema, George A. Romero, with two new ghoul films, Land of the Dead and Diary of the Dead (and there's a third forthcoming, Survival of the Dead.)




With all of that box office success one would think that television executives would be looking to cash in on the zombie hype and get a TV series on the air.

Actually, one network did try: back in 2007 CBS ordered a pilot called Babylon Fields which could be best described as a drama set after the dead return from the grave. After viewing the pilot the network decided that the show didn't fit in with the network's fall schedule, and so a series was never ordered.


So much for zombies on the tube, right?



Well, not really. Just like any good zombie it's hard to keep the idea of a zombie TV series dead and buried.

Last summer the rights to Kirkman's Walking Dead were sold to AMC. Fans of the book may have felt somewhat reassured when it was also mentioned that Frank Darabont would be directing the pilot, as well as writing the pilot's screenplay and serving as an executive producer on the show.

The director of The Shawshank Redemption, The Majestic, The Green Mile and The Mist, Darabont was also a producer on a proposed sequel to The Thing, the 1982 John Carpenter movie.

Unfortunately that four-hour mini-series never got further than the screenplay stage, but when I reviewed it last year, I found the script to be an outstanding idea for a continuation of The Thing.

If Darabont could bring some of that quality found in the Thing mini-series sequel to The Walking Dead TV show, then AMC's Mad Men audience may be in for a real ride.





Only as recently as last week did AMC order a pilot to be made from Darabont's Walking Dead screenplay. If the cable network likes what they see then there'll be a Walking Dead TV series coming as soon as this fall or perhaps around the start of 2011.


So, here is the big question: does Darabont's Walking Dead pilot have the necessary ingredients to be not just a decent horror TV series but a good drama?

The answer: Yes, it does.




Contained in Darabont's 60-page pilot script are all the elements to make the show a success. There's plenty of horror that happens in those 60 pages.

The director's script covers the broad range of the zombie horror emotional spectrum, such as giving us moments of extreme gore (hey, any zombie TV show wouldn't be a zombie show if it didn't have folks being munched on!), moments of shock value (hey, you didn't think that there was a zombie hiding behind that car, did you?) and the moments that I believe are the best indicator that The Walking Dead TV series has what it takes to transcend the boundaries of being simply labelled a horror show, the psychological horror scenes.

Those scenes are the hammers that you're going to remember and the ones that are going to propel this show to be viewed as something more important than just a scary show.





If you're familiar with the beginnings of the comic then you'll be on familiar ground when you watch the pilot episode, even though it would appear that Darabont isn't interested in making a direct adaptation of the comic book's origin story.


Our hero is Officer Rick Grimes, a deputy for a small Georgia town outside of Atlanta. About 15 pages into our story Grimes is involved in a police incident where he receives a near-fatal injury. After being taken to the hospital and falling into a short coma, our law enforcement man awakens to find the hospital empty and the telltale signs that something very bad has gone down while he was out.

The way that Darabont chooses to introduce Grimes to the post-zombie world is nearly identical to the opening moments of Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later but it's forgivable; the impact of the changed world is that much more heightened with Grimes serving as our introduction to it.

From there Grimes tries to find his family, his wife Lori and their young son Carl. He returns to his home and finds the neighborhood deserted, his wife and son gone. Still not fully comprehending what's happened, Grimes is saved by another father and son who have taken up shelter in a neighbor's house. From these two survivors Grimes learns about the zombie plague and the rules of life: if you're bitten, if a zombie so much as scratches you, you become infected, you die and then you become a zombie yourself.


We're also shown some of the rules of the game that the Walking Dead zombies adhere to: there are "walkers", the ones that slowly come up to you. The walkers are slow and a head shot will take them out. That said, there's a lot of walkers out there and if they decide to come at you at once, save that last bullet for yourself, you dig?


From his new neighbors Grimes is told that his family may have decided to head into Atlanta where the government was setting up a safety zone. With that info, Grimes heads off by himself and makes his way into the city. What happens in the next 20-or-so minutes is pretty intense for our hero and I want to leave it for Darabont to show to you.




I'm not sure if Darabont is the kind of guy that puts in camera effects into all of his screenplays but in his Walking Dead script there are a couple of places where he describes the visual tricks that he wants to do to heighten the surreal nature of a scene.

There's a moment where Grimes is in a tough situation and has to fire a pistol at close quarters at a zombie. In the environment that he's in, Grimes is momentarily deafened by the blast.


In Darabont's script, the description of what we the viewer should experience to communicate the deafness is in there. Reading that sort of scene as well as a few others like that made me more interested in seeing what Darabont's visual style is going to be in this show.

If you were a fan of the comic book before, now you know that the pilot's set-up of the Walking Dead story follows a similar arc as the comic's but it's not exact. I'd guess that about half to two-thirds of the first two issues are contained in the pilot episode but there's also new material.

For instance, we now get to see the incident that brought Grimes to the hospital (the comic begins with him coming to in his deserted room) and there's some changes with what happens when he is in Atlanta that differ with the comic's depiction of events. Darabont seems to know what he's doing and in the places where he chooses to include new material, with his changes/additions better serving the story and bring more characterization (at the beginning and middle) and intensity (at the end).

In particular there was a new revelation concerning the plight of the other father that Grimes finds living in his old neighborhood that's not in the comic. This new material really underscored the sense of what kind of deep and unsettling world the survivors are now living in.




Darabont's also done a solid job of knowing what works from The Walking Dead and sometimes reproducing it exactly in his screenplay, such as the case with the bicycle Grimes comes across and the reaction of its former owner to the officer's arrival.



The Walking Dead pilot doesn't sell out its concept for the sake of finding a wider audience. This is a show set in a world where families have died and the survivors haven't had the time to cope with their losses, much less come to terms with civilization collapsing around them.

Knowing the course that Kirkman's comic book takes and now after seeing how Darabont's chose to make the pilot more of a drama than a flat-out horror action show, AMC's Walking Dead has fantastic potential.


The Walking Dead could even do for horror what the new Battlestar Galactica did for science fiction. Cross your fingers and hope that the show comes together as well as it did on the page.

http://coronacomingattractions.com/n...dead-tv-series

[JamesG]

TV: The Walking Dead Pilot to Begin Lensing in May
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
By: MrDisgusting


Bloody Disgusting has learned that a May 15 start date has been locked for the pilot episode of "The Walking Dead", AMC's live-action comic book adaptation being directed by Frank Darabont.

Shooting will commence in Atlanta, GA with hopes of bringing us a new TV series based on one of the greatest comics of all time.



Published by Image Comics, Robert Kirkman's tale chronicles the travels of a group of people trying to survive in a world stricken by a zombie apocalypse.

The Walking Dead is centered on Rick Grimes, a small-town police officer from Cynthiana, Kentucky, his family, and a number of other survivors who have banded together in order to survive after the world is overrun with zombies. As the series progresses, the characters become more developed, and their personalities shift under the stress of a zombie apocalypse.

Fighting growing despair — and sometimes each other — the group searches for a secure location which they can finally call home.

http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/19047

[JamesG]

First Actor Announced for "Walking Dead"
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
March 26, 2010


Frank Darabont and AMC's series "The Walking Dead" has begun casting.

Jon Bernthal will play Shane, best friend to the lead character Rick Grimes who has not been cast yet.

Bernthal has starred in "Eastwick" and he played Al Capone in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.



"The Walking Dead" is based on the on-going comic book series by Robert Kirkman. It follows Grimes, a police officer who awakens from a coma to a zombie apocalypse.

He sets out with other survivors to find his family and a safe haven from the flesh-eaters.



Darabont begins shooting in a few months.

http://www.shocktillyoudrop.com/news...s.php?id=14658

[JamesG]

FX Shop Locked for "The Walking Dead"
Source: Ryan Rotten, Managing Editor
March 29, 2010


No stranger to the undead, Greg Nicotero confirmed to Shock Till You Drop that KNB Effects Group - which he co-operates with Howard Berg - is pulling zombie duties on "The Walking Dead".

This re-teams the shop with writer-director Frank Darabont. They last worked together on 2007's Stephen King adaptation The Mist. KNB recently wrapped Predators in Texas.



KNB's recent history with zombies includes overseeing the work on Diary of the Dead and Survival of the Dead (Nicotero served as a makeup FX producer on both) and creating the undead for Land of the Dead and "Masters of Horror".

http://www.shocktillyoudrop.com/news...s.php?id=14673

[JamesG]

AMC Orders Up More "Walking Dead"
Source: Ryan Rotten, Managing Editor
March 29, 2010


AMC must be digging what Frank Darabont is cooking up for "The Walking Dead". Six episodes have been ordered and the network is wisely aiming for an October debut.

Just in time for the Halloween season and AMC's annual Fearfest!



Darabont is still trying to find his leading man for Rick Grimes who, as you might know from reading Robert Kirkman's "Walking Dead" comic books, is the police officer who wakes up from a coma and must contend with survival during a zombie uprising.

Jon Bernthal has been cast as Shane, Grimes' partner and friend.




Charlie Collier, AMC President, says in a press release, "With its depth of story and the remarkable talent attached, "The Walking Dead" gives us an opportunity to raise the bar significantly within this popular genre, and continue our commitment to being the home of premium programming on basic cable."



"The Walking Dead" begins production in June in Atlanta with six, one-hour episodes for season one.

KNB EFX is handling the make-up, as we reported this morning.

http://www.shocktillyoudrop.com/news...s.php?id=14680

[JamesG]

TV: Rick Grimes Officially Cast in AMC's "The Walking Dead"
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
By: MrDisgusting


In the end, AMC has cast Andrew Lincoln as the lead in its zombie apocalypse thriller "The Walking Dead", the Frank Darabont adaptation that goes behind camera this June in Atlanta.

Lincoln ("Teachers," "Enduring Love") will play Rick Grimes, a small-town cop who leads a group of survivors in their struggle against a world besieged by zombies.

As previously announced, Jon Bernthal will play Shane, a survivor who was Rick's police partner before the zombie disaster.



"Andrew Lincoln, wow -- what an amazing find this guy is," said Robert Kirkman, who wrote the comic book series upon which the series is based.

"Writing Rick Grimes month after month in the comic series, I had no idea he was an actual living breathing human being, and yet here he is. I couldn't be more thrilled with how this show is coming together."



AMC has already ordered 6 episodes.

http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/19714

[JamesG]

Bit 'O "Walking Dead" Clarification
Source: BrandonRouth.com
April 12, 2010


The morning began with some news circulating around the web that Brandon Routh was potentially going to co-star in the Frank Darabont/AMC series "The Walking Dead".

Not bad, not bad. But it ain't true.




The official site for the actor debunked this rumor via Twitter stating he is not on board, contrary to those reports that spread like wildfire.

Besides, if he was cast, I could only picture him as Shane, best friend to the Rick Grimes character. But Shane's shoes have already been filled by actor Jon Bernthal.

Andrew Lincoln stars as Rick.




Normally, we'd skirt rumors like this one if we were not sure of it ourselves, but as the story blew up throughout the day, we thought we'd give you an update regardless.

http://www.shocktillyoudrop.com/news...s.php?id=14844

[JamesG]

Darabont Regular Joins Cast of "Walking Dead"
Source: FearNET
April 17, 2010


This is all kinds of perfect.

FearNET reports actor Jeffrey DeMunn has joined the cast of "The Walking Dead", AMC's highly anticipated television series based on Robert Kirkman's comic book of the same name.

He'll join actors Andrew Lincoln, as Rick, and Jon Bernthal cast as Shane. The site speculates DeMunn will fill the role of Dale, and we'd bet money on that, too.





DeMunn has appeared in "Walking Dead" director Frank Darabont's previous efforts The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, The Majestic and The Mist.

He has also starred in "Stephen King's Storm of the Century".




Darabont and company are currently in Atlanta, Georgia prepping for principal photography.

http://www.shocktillyoudrop.com/news...s.php?id=14896

[JamesG]

Exclusive: Frank Darabont Talks "The Walking Dead"
April 19, 2010


On Friday, April 16, the Dallas Film Society presented Frank Darabont with a Star Award for his considerable body of work, which includes The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and The Mist among other screenwriting and directing projects.

Earlier that day, FEARnet sat down with Darabont to talk about the honor of receiving the award, what it means to reflect personally and professionally on his body of work, and what’s in store for horror fans as he moves into production on "The Walking Dead", a forthcoming television series based on Robert Kirkman’s graphic novel series about zombies for which Darabont has already been commissioned by AMC to produce six episodes.





FEARnet: What did they tell you when they invited you out to give you this award?

Frank Darabont: Come out, we’ll give you an award – we want to give you this nice award to honor you and your work. I said okay, why not? There’s nothing to complain about there.

I kind of wondered why I was chosen, or asked to be the guy for this, but what the heck? Do not look a gift horse in the mouth. Just thank the horse.







Do you see threads that run through your work, either when you’re doing films, or in retrospect?

For example, notwithstanding the choice of doing multiple Stephen King adaptations, you did A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 early in your career, and then did The Mist later on?

Does it occur to you at any level that you do or don’t gravitate towards material that could be similar in concept or theme to what you’ve already done?

As a writer and as a filmmaker, you do find yourself drawn to themes that are consistent. There’s a certain resonance throughout the work that I’ve found you’re not even really aware of until afterwards – hindsight being the perfect tool, of course.

You look back and go, oh, wow, there is a commonality between Shawshank Redemption and The Majestic; there’s a commonality between The Green Mile and The Mist.


The specifics are quite different, but sort of the underlying themes – I mean, The Mist is sort of the anti-Shawshank, isn’t it, in that it’s examining hopelessness instead of hope, you know? It’s more condemning human nature than praising it, and yet it pivots on the same fulcrum.

And in a sense, it’s also a prison movie – people are trapped in a supermarket and trying out what to make of their lives. In a way The Majestic is a prison movie too – there’s no prison in it at all, but it’s a guy trapped in his life that is like a prison to him, and given an opportunity to step out of the gate and be his better self.

So you do find these themes that do recur in you work, but only after the fact. One of these days I’d like to do something that’s completely different from those.







When I spoke to you about The Green Mile coming out on DVD a few years ago, you talked about the frustrating experience of writing the Indiana Jones script.

Talking about the idea of recognizing themes and inspirations in retrospect, do you feel that The Mist was perhaps some exploration of that frustration with Indiana Jones as it related to a sense of hopelessness?

I think The Mist was really my exploration of my frustration with the 21st century thus far, and where the hopelessness and divisiveness that human beings seem to be embracing and which indeed this country seems to be embracing, which I find heartbreaking because I’ve always loved this country. That was really much more of a political film than my personal bitchfest about things in my career that haven’t gone right.

But I think the Indiana Jones situation was simply one of those experiences where… hey, there’s a great line in Reservoir Dogs where Steve Buscemi says “some guys are lucky, and some ain’t,” and that’s true of everybody and their careers as well.

You never know going in whether something is going to land with a hollow thud or land with grace and beauty, or not land at all. We all weather these peaks and valleys, and I hope to weather my successes and failures with equal grace.







Could you talk about "The Walking Dead" a little bit? Zombieland came out last year-

A great movie.





It was a great movie, but originally it was supposed to be a TV series.

Do you feel emboldened by the success of that film, or does that fact that it was considered better-suited for film prove intimidating?

It’s going to be a very different animal, it really is, so Zombieland, as much as I do love it, because boy is it a great comedy, and I laughed my ass off, it’s more in the world of Shaun of the Dead, another of my favorite movies, that is in the kind of world that we’re going to be trying to create.

Robert Kirkman’s comic book series, the graphic novel series, is very much a template for us, and it’s a tremendous opportunity to take the subject as serious as possible, and really as a long-term exploration of characters, which is what television does best when television is really working.


That’s our goal, so gosh, I really don’t think that Zombieland is any competition for us nor are we for them.

It’s really going to be I think two different animals. We’re much more beholden to Kirkman, which is a comfortable place to be because he has blazed a fantastic trail for us to follow.

We will take detours along that path – we will take steps off the trail – but always wind up veering back onto the trail that Robert provides for us, because it’s fantastic stuff.







Does that source material provide you with a pretty complete template for the rules of that world? Because notwithstanding Zombieland last year, of course there’s a great legacy of zombie films.

Okay, that’s the intimidating part (laughs). Because that actually proves to be actually a deep pool of very, very good stuff. Boy, there’s a lot of good stuff that’s been done. You see all of these home runs along the way and you go, how will I do?

I don’t want to posit ourselves as being competition for any of those films, but I hope that we’ll be considered at least in the category of that good stuff as we go along – that it was worthy stuff to do.

And I think Robert has given us a tremendous leg up, a head start in that sense.







Have you thought about what sort of platform will be required to execute these stories as the show progresses?

Network broadcasts might limit what you could do in terms of gore, but cable channels like HBO would give you greater latitude.

I think there’s going to be obviously an ongoing dialogue with standards and practices, but I think we have a friendly venue in AMC, if you see the kind of edgy stuff that "Breaking Bad" is doing, which I adore, by the way.

I don’t think we’re going to be lacking for adult content or the ability to depict the world that we’re depicting. I don’t think we’re going to have that many constraints, and if there are they’ll be in minor increments that will not affect the storytelling that we’re doing.

It will just give us an opportunity to maybe do an enhanced cut on DVD or something, but I really don’t think we’ll be constrained too far. I’m certainly not getting the sense that AMC is there to interfere; they are a fantastic group of folks, and they’re very excited about this. They really want to enable rather than hinder this process.







Is that what’s immediately next on your slate?

Mmm-hmm. Oh yeah, hell, I just got off the plane from Atlanta where we’re scouting. We’re in prep right now, we’re casting, and we’re shooting the first of six episodes in June, the top of June.

So we’re what, seven weeks out now?







How many of the cast and crew people are assembled at this point?

We are right now looking to cast the two female roles in the ensemble.

We’ve also just gotten Jeff DeMunn; I’ve always said Jeff DeMunn is my good luck charm, and I can’t make a film without him. We’ve just gotten him on board as one of the ensemble members, which is a great joy for me.


One of the great pleasures of doing anything is to be able to reconvene with those colleagues who have the talent and provide you with the comfort zone of great collaborative, positive energy. Not to sound like Andy Hardy here, but if you’re going to go do a show in a barn, do it with people who have really got the talent and are great to work with, and so far that’s all coming together.

Not just in the cast end, but on the crew end. I’m working with people I really value and really treasure. And it may not mean anything to the general public, but to have my first A.D. Casey Caldwell on this means the world to me.


To have my production designer Greg Melton on this means the world to me. I’m going to get to work with David Tattersall again, and he’s going to shoot the pilot for me. I haven’t had the chance to work with him since The Majestic, so it’s been about ten years, and he is one of the great gentlemen in his line of work, and one of the great talents.

All of these people are. So I’m very lucky that way, and these are people that will have your back. They will go the extra mile.







Does David’s participation mean that you’re planning to shoot it digitally?

No! Actually we’re not going to shoot it digitally. We’re going to go old-school – we’re going to go film. I tested all of the different camera systems that are available at the moment because I was very keen actually on trying out the digital approach, and then I realized that I was really going to shoot myself in the foot because I did, simply because the nature of this particular show made me consider you want what you’re shooting on to help the make-up instead of hurt the make-up – let’s start there.


Hi-def is a little merciless when it comes to these things, so we’re shooting on film. This is going to be a show where people are hiding places and looking out windows and doors and stuff; well, if what’s outside that door is completely blown-out, nuclear white because digital doesn’t have the latitude that film does, you’d better shoot on film because you want whatever is outside to look like outside. You want to see walls and trees, and even if it’s overexposed, there’s a sense of reality to it. if you’re shooting digitally and you point at the door and all there is is white, you might as well shoot on a sound stage and hang a white silk out there.


By necessity, you pick the thing that you think will help the show the best, and yeah – we’re going to be shooting old school.

http://www.fearnet.com/news/intervie...s_walking.html

[JamesG]

TV: Rick Grimes' Wife Lori Cast for AMC's "The Walking Dead"
Friday, April 30, 2010
By: MrDisgusting


Sarah Wayne Callies ("Prison Break") has just scored the female lead in AMC's eagerly anticipated "The Walking Dead" series, based on Robert Kirkman’s megapopular comic books, reports EW.


The Ausiello Files fave will portray Lori Grimes, the slowly-unraveling wife of the show’s hero, Rick (Andrew Lincoln).

http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/20036

[JamesG]

TV: Casting Rounding Out for Darabont's "The Walking Dead"
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
By: MrDisgusting


AMC continues to add to the cast of Frank Darabont's apocalyptic zombie drama "The Walking Dead" by tapping Laurie Holden (Silent Hill) for the role of Andrea, a key member of the survivor group who has a proficiency with a sniper rifle and falls for a man twice her age.

Holden was in writer-producer-director Darabont's The Mist and had a recurring role in the final season of FX's "The Shield."


In addition, newcomer Steven Yeun has been added to the cast as Glenn. He and Holden join Andrew Lincoln, Jeffrey DeMunn and Jon Bernthal on the show.



The Image Comics adaptation is set among a group of zombie survivors of an apocalypse who are led by a police officer, Rick Grimes, in search of a safe place to live.

http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/20086

[JamesG]

Robert Kirkman tells Quint about the Frank Darabont WALKING DEAD TV series!!!
Published on Wednesday, May 26, 2010


Ahoy, squirts! Quint here.

Yeah, so I geeked out a little bit on Robert Kirkman. Sue me. The Walking Dead is my favorite comic out right now.



We got to talk for nearly 20 minutes about his role in the upcoming AMC series based on his zombie comic, spearheaded and led by Mr. Frank Darabont.

We discuss the support the show is getting from the network, the lengths to which they can go on non-pay TV and I was surprised to find out that gore-wise we look to be in good shape.

We just can’t expect any f-bombs.



Kirkman spilled a few details, including which episodes he’s writing in season 1 and just how the hell Jeffrey DeMunn is playing. I had a lot of fun with this chat and I hope you guys enjoy it, too!




Quint: Hello, sir. How do you do?

Kirkman: I’m doing all right.


Quint: I’m very excited to be talking to you about this because THE WALKING DEAD is my favorite comic book out now, so this is…

Kirkman: And rightly so!


Quint: “Damn right it is!”

[Both Laugh]







Quint: But I have to say upfront that I’m at least two months behind, so anything that’s happened after the group got to the “a little too nice looking” suburb I’m not up to date on.


Kirkman: Well I won’t hold that against you and I’ll do my best not to spoil anything.





Quint: Regardless, I’ll be buying them. What’s kind of funny is that the person who turned me onto THE WALKING DEAD five years ago was Frank Darabont.

I had talked with him once or twice and then I bumped into him at a premiere and we got to talking about what he was doing and he said, “Hey, I just got this great comic book, a zombie book called THE WALKING DEAD.” He urged me to check it out, I did and then I got hooked.

Now you guys are finally actually getting to make the show.


Kirkman: Yeah, it all worked out.








Quint: I’ve read some of your tweets where you are saying you were location scouting.

The impression I get is AMC seems to be really getting behind the show. Is that right?


Kirkman: Yeah, AMC is giving us a huge deal of support and they have already shown that they have a lot of confidence in the show just by immediately picking up the six episode first season without ever even starting to shoot the pilot, which I’m told is fairly unusual, so I’m pretty excited with how the process has been going so far.



Everyone’s moving full speed ahead. That’s kind of a fun thing because like you say you talked to Frank like five years ago and there was a time when it was going to be a pilot at NBC, but that kind of fell through and Frank kind of stayed in the picture and kept in touch with me and did his best to do things behind the scenes to try and get it made because he really likes the comic and I think was really gung-ho about making it.



The funny thing to me is five years went by and it was a little bit more than a year ago when Frank called me and said “Hey, I think AMC is interested in this.” They optioned it in September of last year, I think, and then in January they were like “Hey, we are making the show.”

Then from January up until now, it has been nonstop. It just cracks me up how things can move so slowly and then as soon as they decide to make a show it’s like a hundred things happening at once.



So right now it’s like full speed ahead and they are moving forward with this pilot. I wrote the first episode and then they are going to be shooting all summer for the first six episodes.

Frank is in Atlanta right now doing prep, so he’s kind of hard at it. They start shooting in, I think, a week.




Quint: That’s crazy.

Kirkman: It’s pretty exciting.
And then I’ll be going down there for that, so I’m looking forward to it.










Quint: Are you looking to have any sort of involvement beyond just the first episode?

Can you see yourself coming back and scripting more or are you just wanting to kick it off right?”


Kirkman: You know what, I’ll give you guys a little bit of a… I think it might be an exclusive.

I don’t think anybody has talked about it yet and I don’t know why it would need to be kept a secret or anything, but I’m actually writing the fourth episode in the six episode first season, so I’ve been spending time in the writer’s room and working with them plumbing out the season.



I just turned in my outline for the fourth episode a week or so ago. I’m going to be pretty involved in the series up to the point of actually writing a few episodes here and there, hopefully as we move into the second season.

So yeah, it’s pretty exciting.









Quint: That’s great. It’s got to be a completely different beast than your standard script duties for the book.

Is it an hour long show or half hour?


Kirkman: It’s an hour long. It’s a little bit different. I’ve done screenwriting before…

Also, the writers room is a very useful tool and they will be there to say, “Yeah, that script doesn’t look like a television script, it looks like a comic script. You need to change this around,” so I’ll be leaning on them quite a bit as I kind of learn the ropes.

They are all great guys who are really supportive, so I’m pretty excited about that.



I do need to clarify, just a second ago I said something about “As we move into the second season.” I don’t want to give you the impression that that’s already been picked up or anything.

Everyone on the show is just assuming that it’s going to get a second season. We are all pretty optimistic because we know how good the show’s going to be, but I don’t want you to say “Oh, it looks like he slipped!” I don’t want you to think it’s been picked up or anything because that’s definitely not the case.




Quint: No worries. It’s always good to clarify.

I wouldn’t have announced it like that or made a big deal of it, but I think you might have had some fans pick up on that.


Kirkman: Exactly.











Quint: Considering that even JJ Abrams, who created one of the most popular shows ever, had to shoot a pilot before the network committed to his new series it’s pretty spectacular that AMC’s going in sight unseen?


Kirkman: I really have to give that to Frank Darabont. His vision for this show is so unique and the pilot script is so strong that I think that that’s why AMC got behind it so quickly.

I think Darabont’s hand in this is the thing that is driving it. I think that he’s going to turn this into a pretty awesome television show.





Quint: I know this is going to come across totally as me kissing your ass, but he’s got such great material to work with.


Kirkman: Look, I’m not denying that either!










Quint: AMC has, obviously, been very supportive, but what can you get away with on AMC, in terms of graphic language and the intensity of the violence and stuff like that?


Kirkman: You know, we just had a long meeting about this.

There are some language restrictions. You’re not going to be dropping the F-bomb on AMC, which is fine. It’s not like if no one ever said the “f” word in WALKING DEAD the comic book, people would miss it.



I think the best way to put it is if you have ever watched BREAKING BAD…. they push the limit in BREAKING BAD quite often. There’s severed heads on the back of turtles, there’s liquefied bodies falling through ceilings, somebody just got their head blown off recently.

I don’t want to spoil anything, but there’s very graphic nasty stuff that’s on BREAKING BAD all of the time and the thing that I was very excited to learn about AMC is that there is no limitation to how much of that you can have per episode or per hour or per minute.





Quint: Really?


Kirkman: Anything you have seen in BREAKING BAD we can do every minute of our show.

And then also there’s a lot of things you can get away with, because they are zombies, so you will be seeing all kinds of cool stuff that you would expect to see in THE WALKING DEAD: THE TV SHOW, so while it isn’t a pay cable channel, I think that people are still going to get what they want.






Quint: That’s good, because having a neutered zombie show is definitely not ideal, especially when you have people like KNB on board who can tear people up pretty good.


Kirkman: Oh yeah.

Nicotero has already been doing make-up tests on all of the zombies and there’s a bite test that I’ve seen.

There’s a head shot test… So there’s all kinds of cool stuff that he’s already done on the show that just looks amazing.





Quint: I haven’t seen anything yet, but I’ve heard that Nicotero’s zombies are very Adlard-ish.


Kirkman: Yeah, they are very true to the comics.











Quint: Here’s a question that I know a lot of fans have asked… I’ve seen this pop up a lot in our talkback.

Has there been any talk at all about shooting the show in black and white?


Kirkman: No, no there isn’t.

I have a concern that if people were flipping the channels and they saw something that was in black and white, they might think it was an old movie.

It’s just something that’s usually not done on television and while I think it’s neat and I know Darabont likes black and white a lot, that’s why there’s a black and white version of THE MIST on the DVD and he wanted to do the movie in black and white originally.

I don’t know that there’s going to be a black and white version of the show on the DVD. There might be, but it just doesn’t make sense as a television show for a lot of reasons.




One of the things that I’m really adamant about is I want this to be the best show possible and I don’t want there to be any kind of limitations on the show where they are trying to mimic the comic book.

I think black and white would be limiting the show only for the reason of making it more like the comic book. And I kind of like that the show is going to be somewhat different than the comic, so that it will be a different experience for people who like the comic and read the comic.

I’m fine with it being in color and I think it’s going to be great.



Now it’s not going to be a rainbowy bright color kind of show because I know they are doing a lot of visual stuff to kind of dull things down and not put a lot of bright colors on screen and make it visually interesting and fit the tone of the story, but it’s not going to be black and white.










Quint: I guess the last thing that we should probably talk about regarding the TV show is the cast, which is starting to bit by bit come out.

I think the last ones I saw were Jeff DeMunn and Laurie Holden coming on board. I think those are really interesting people. I like that they are Darabont regulars.

Have you gotten to weigh in at all?
Has Frank asked your opinion on any of this stuff or is this kind of off in his world?


Kirkman: I got to see most of the screen tests and a lot of the readings and I saw the different actors that tried out for the different roles and I would kind of hang back and enjoy them and let Gale Anne Hurde and AMC and Frank…

You know, they know acting and they know actors and they are the ones actually making the show. I had input, but I wasn’t really going to come in and tell them “I like this guy” because I don’t know anything about acting! “That guy” could be really horrible! I know what I like and I know what I don’t like, but I’m no expert.



So basically they would come to me and they would say… for instance with Andrew Lincoln “This guy is really great. We really like him. Do you see him as Rick? What do you think about him?”


In the case of Andrew, I was like “He’s perfect.” His screen test was great. He’s a really good actor. He’s not too terribly recognizable, so it’s not like I’m going to be sitting there “Oh no, that’s not Rick, I’ve seen him in other things,” so he was perfect and I responded and said “Yeah, that guy’s awesome. I would totally love it if he was Rick.”


So they cast him. Now maybe they did that just because of me, you know. Maybe I got that guy the part, but probably not. (laughs) So I was definitely involved and I basically loved everyone that they picked and so I don’t know how influential I was on the casting at all.



I think Jon Bernthal is excellent, Sarah Wayne Callies is great, and Jeffrey DeMunn is awesome. I was so thrilled. He was great in THE MIST, so yeah I’m really excited about the cast.

I can’t wait to meet all of these people and annoy the sh*t out of them on the set. It’s going to be awesome!







Quint: (laughs) And you get that right too. “This is mine suckers, you’re going to have to put up with me!”


Kirkman: (laughs) I’m going to see if I can get a photo of me wearing Dale’s… Jeffrey DeMunn, who I guess I just revealed is playing Dale, which for some reason they never printed out and people were speculating as to who he was playing.



Quint: Yeah, well who else is he going to play, really?


Kirkman: Yeah, it’s pretty obvious, but I’ve got to get that hat. I’ve got to wear that hat!


Quint: Oh yeah, that little fisherman hat or whatever? The kind of grandfatherly fisherman hat that he wears all of the time, yeah.


Kirkman: Yeah!

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