The Walking Dead Wins Season Two
…Before the first one even airs
The story of Frank Darabont’s attempt to bring Robert Kirkman’s beloved zombie comic The Walking Dead to TV screens has, in the last year or so, been filled largely with good news. It got picked up by US network AMC (and FX over here), went quickly from pilot to first series commission (AMC’s usual six episode kick-off), and has been building some healthy buzz, particularly after the trailer was shown at Comic-Con and arrived online. Now there’s another milestone passed as the show has won a second season before a frame of the first has even aired.
Fangoria reports that the show has been officially renewed, with filming set to start in February next year. And in keeping with AMC’s usual schedule, the next season will be 13 episodes.
While the first season took place in the blazing Atlanta heat, it’s possible that the next set of stories could take a cue from Volume 2 of the comics and be set during a different season. "It would be great not just to get out of the heat, but to present a different idea to the audience visually and tonally by having it be winter,” Darabont tells Comic Book Movie. There’s some really cool stuff that Kirkman did, where they find the one zombie that’s frozen to the ground. I’d never seen that before and that’s really cool.”
And given that he and Kirkman have been playing with the narrative and shifting stories and characters around a little (though the overall plot will be largely faithful to the comic), he might just get the chance to introduce his favourite character from the books: Michonne. “When she shows up – and boy, is she a character I can’t wait to get to – when she comes striding out of the wasteland like a Clint Eastwood f***ing spaghetti Western character cross-melded with some samurai movie, like the Baby Cart character with the f***ing sword, and there’s just a little drift of snow in the air. I would love to put that on film."
So if you were excited to see the show already, now you don’t have to worry about it being cancelled immediately should you end up loving it, and then having to go through years of therapy to get over it like we did to get over My So-Called Life and Firefly. Er. Ahem.
The first episode, written and directed by Darabont, will air on October 31 in the US and arrives over here shortly afterwards. There will be plenty more on the show in a future issue of Empire.
James White
