AMC is looking to develop a show around The Walking Dead, the comic book series about a group of survivors who try to adjust to life after the zombie apocalypse. Does this mean that zombies are the new Mad Men?
Variety reports that the cable station is close to inking a deal with Frank Darabont, writer and director of such films as The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption, to develop a cable series based on Robert Kirkman's popular series. The series begins several weeks after a zombie outbreak has left the United States in ruins, shutting down the country's infrastructure and killing most of the living population. Police officer Rick Grimes has woken from a coma, to find the world he once knew destroyed. He travels to Atlanta in search of his wife and son. There, he bands with a group of fellow survivors, and together they try to survive a world where the conveniences of modern life are a distant memory, and flesh-hungry zombies scour the land.
As over-exposed as zombies have become, there's plenty of reason to be excited for a Walking Dead television series. While humans certainly do fall to the zombies, the comic book series is no typical undead gorefest. It's about the things that happen after the apocalypse — about how the characters adjust to the new realities of their universe, and the decisions and changes they must make to survive. It's not a story that would work within the confines of a two-hour feature film, but on television it could offer a vision of the apocalypse that we don't usually see. And with Darabont at the helm, TV zombies could be as smartly depicted as 1960s advertising executives.
[Variety]