JacquieHelwig
Thursday, October 14, 2010, 11:56 AM
This year at New York’s Comic Con one of the big panels was the Walking Dead on AMC. And of course as a fan of the comic I had to go to it. A lot of people are always on edge when the written medium is translated to film. At no point in time I was ever hesitant about the upcoming series appearing on AMC this Halloween at 10pm EST.
Held in the IGN Theater of the Jacob Javits center, outside the crowd trailed of hundreds of people eager to get in for the panel. The panel started off with 6 minutes of footage from the second episode in new season. The clip played and the crowed cheered and clapped. Not one boo in the theater. After the clip, we were joined by director Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile), and executive producers, Robert Kirkman (writer of the comic) and Gale Anne Hurd (The Terminator, Aliens, Armageddon).
The three went into some interesting questioning after taking their seats. It was decided rather then making Walking Dead into a movie, it was better to make it into a television series. Another thing was you don’t normally see zombies on television regularly. That’s where the good folks at AMC came in. When approached about making a zombie television series, from the graphic novel AMC jumped on it. AMC was so supportive during the whole process.
One of the key points was to make the series as big as possible. The show has a real cinematic feel to it. But the question arises how true the television series is going to stay to the comics story. The three agreed that the comic was the path that was created for the series, now if good ideas come up they can always use them, but always come back to the original story. The clip played at the panel, wasn’t in the comic, but it was still amazing. Robert Kirkman said,” It was a chance to revisit and write with characters that when long gone in the series.” The over all feel of the show, is a tribute to the great zombie film, Night of the Living Dead. The panel felt like a reassurance that the upcoming series of Walking Dead, was going to be just as exciting as when you first got the comic.
Held in the IGN Theater of the Jacob Javits center, outside the crowd trailed of hundreds of people eager to get in for the panel. The panel started off with 6 minutes of footage from the second episode in new season. The clip played and the crowed cheered and clapped. Not one boo in the theater. After the clip, we were joined by director Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile), and executive producers, Robert Kirkman (writer of the comic) and Gale Anne Hurd (The Terminator, Aliens, Armageddon).
The three went into some interesting questioning after taking their seats. It was decided rather then making Walking Dead into a movie, it was better to make it into a television series. Another thing was you don’t normally see zombies on television regularly. That’s where the good folks at AMC came in. When approached about making a zombie television series, from the graphic novel AMC jumped on it. AMC was so supportive during the whole process.
One of the key points was to make the series as big as possible. The show has a real cinematic feel to it. But the question arises how true the television series is going to stay to the comics story. The three agreed that the comic was the path that was created for the series, now if good ideas come up they can always use them, but always come back to the original story. The clip played at the panel, wasn’t in the comic, but it was still amazing. Robert Kirkman said,” It was a chance to revisit and write with characters that when long gone in the series.” The over all feel of the show, is a tribute to the great zombie film, Night of the Living Dead. The panel felt like a reassurance that the upcoming series of Walking Dead, was going to be just as exciting as when you first got the comic.