The Walking Dead TV Series

Got this from TIMESONLINE.com


From Times Online
August 13, 2009
Shawshank director Frank Darabont to make Walking Dead TV series
Frank Darabont swaps prison dramas for the undead with television adaptation of critically acclaimed comic book

(Charlie Adlard)
Walking Dead artwork by Charlie Adlard
Owen Vaughan
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The director of The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile is to adapt the zombie comic The Walking Dead for television.

Charlie Adlard, the comic's artist, told Times Online that Frank Darabont was writing and directing a pilot for the US cable network AMC.

"This has been in the works for a while but finally we can announce something positive," Adlard said.

The Walking Dead, which is written and created by Robert Kirkman, has been running since 2003 and has been compared to The Wire and Lost , such is its quality and breadth of scope. The story follows a small band of survivors in small-town America after a mysterious epidemic sweeps the world and causes the dead to rise and feast on the living, and although it does adhere loosely to the staples of the genre, it is no mere exploitation horror comic. The drama is not in the scenes of zombie extermination but in the pain of normal people struggling to keep alive in a world where civilisation has crumbled and died.

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Darabont may be known for his powerful prison dramas but he has a past in horror. He wrote The Fly II and last year his adaptation of Stephen King's The Mist touched on the same territory as The Walking Dead: a small-town community struggles to deal with a monstrous threat. Also onboard is Terminator producer Gale Anne Hurd.

Joel Stillerman, a vice president at AMC, which is behind the hit show Mad Men, told Variety that The Walking Dead appealed to the network because of "the quality of the storytelling" in Kirkman's work. The series would stay faithful to the tone of the original novels, he said. "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."

Fans of The Walking Dead will be pleased they have film-maker of Darabont's stature on board, more so because a large part of the comic takes place in a prison.