What will Frank Darabont Bring to THE WALKING DEAD Series on AMC?

The Walking Dead is a comic book from Robert Kirkland that is being adapted into a TV series for AMC. We reported that Shawshank Redemption director Frank Darabont is attached to bring this story to the small screen. I couldn't be more excited for Darabont to start working with zombies! This match up with story and director is a perfect match, and I can't wait to see this series brought to life as a weekly series.

MTV recently spoke to the creator of the comic Robert Kirkland who is serving as an executive producer on the show. Here is what he had to say about Darabont coming on board the project.

When I heard that Darabont was interested in doing it a long, long time ago, I was just ecstatic. For me, "The Walking Dead" is not necessarily a horror thing. It's not all about the shocks. It's about characters and all of that dramatic nonsense. And Darabont does that better than anybody.

If you've seen "The Shawshank Redemption" or "The Mist," you know he gets to the heart of the characters and shows them dealing with extremes. It's a match made in heaven.

He then goes on to talk about how he doesn't want the TV show to be a replica of the comic book, he wants Darabopnt to play with the world and take it into different directions.

Frank understands the material 100 percent. It's always been shocking to me, doing Hollywood meetings over the years, just how easy it is for someone to come in to the meeting and say something like, "We want the zombies to have super powers." Knowing that, I'm really excited about it, because from my discussions with Frank, he likes the right things about "Walking Dead."

I've told Frank flat-out that I do not want him to follow the comic to the detriment of the show. 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.

Now because the show is on AMC will the series loose it's edge? Stations like HBO and Showtime can go all out with no restrictions, but what about AMC? Is there a concern there? I would say no, because AMC does a lot of shows that push the boundaries in a good way. Kirkman says no as well and gives a great explanation of why.

I had no concerns about that whatsoever, because one of the concerns I have about zombie fiction is when they rely too much on the shocking gore aspects. That's not really the point of "Walking Dead," so to a certain extant, I think it will work better at AMC—because it forces people not to rely on that stuff. As far as "Walking Dead" not having teeth on AMC, if you've ever seen [certain episodes of] "Mad Men" or "Breaking Bad," they push a lot of boundaries as far as content goes.

In fact, I just had a meeting with a bunch of the executives at AMC, and Darabont, and Gale Anne Hurd and David Alpert at Circle of Confusion, and the executives were talking to Darabont about his script and they said, "You can't use the F-word." That was the only limitation they gave him. We were all stunned.

The thing is, you don't necessarily have to see everything that's going on, and sometimes things are even more horrific when you don't see the goriest parts.

He makes some great points there, and I'm excited to see what how this all comes together. For horror fans I think this is a going to be a dream come true. Everything is vampire love stories these day's, now it's time to dive in the world of zombies for a TV series. You should definitely read the comic The Walking Dead, to see what it's all about, if you haven't already.