Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Mist) is close to a deal that will have him executive produce, write and direct a series adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead comics for AMC. The series follows a group of people, lead by a cop, struggling to survive a zombie apocalypse and find a safe place to call home. Joel Stillerman, AMC’s Senior Vice President of Original Programming, said that the series would “not [be] 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 is portrayed in a smart, sophisticated way.”
Darabont has proven himself quite adept at adapting other people’s work, with the aforementioned Stephen King films plus The Green Mile. The Mist is probably most relevant to this project, and that’s a film I really liked. While I haven’t yet read any of The Walking Dead, I suspect the atmosphere of dread and the politics of a small group of survivors as seen in The Mist proves that Darabont’s a great choice to bring this to the screen. Come to think of it, it’d be pretty cool if the series was shot for black and white, like the comic and the alternate version of The Mist.
By my count this is the third genre series AMC is developing. They’re also working on adapting Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars novel, which follows a scientific mission to colonize and begin terraforming Mars and political issues related to the first decades of a new Martian civilization. Darren Aronofsky and John McLaughlin have Riverview Towers in development, about a family moving into an apartment building where they encounter paranormal activities.
