While hosting a panel at CCXP, Collider’s Steve Weintraub got to the bottom of those questions with The Walking Dead comic co-creator, Kirkman. Digging into the rich history behind the show’s rise to the top, Kirkman broke the beginnings down rather simply, putting its first steps all on one man — series developer and Season 1 showrunner Frank Darabont.
“Look, the honest truth is that Frank Darabont got The Walking Dead made. If Frank Darabont doesn’t go into House of Secrets in Burbank and somebody recommends him a Walking Dead comic, I’m not sitting here right now. So, I wasn’t in a lot of those meetings… I made a lot of decisions and there’s some behind the scenes stuff that I probably can’t get into, but a lot of those calls were me and my manager trying to navigate the waters of AMC and what they had promised Darabont, what was going on with that. So, I have a lot of visibility into the early days of production on that show, and I will only tell those stories in private.”
‘The Walking Dead’ Was a Hot Ticket Item
Avoiding the trap that many authors and original brains fall into when bringing their project to the screen in any sort of capacity, Kirkman said that he never felt pressure to shift the storyline for the adaptation. For the most part, he believes this was because of the tight bidding war raging between AMC and HBO for rights to the series, revealing:
“I was able to avoid that because Walking Dead was a very desired project and there was kind of a bidding war between HBO and AMC that was happening. And because of that bidding war, AMC and HBO kind of got into a competition of, ‘We’ll give Robert this.’ ‘No, we’ll give Robert this.’ ‘No, we’ll give Robert this.’ ‘No, we’ll give Robert this,’ and we just kept going, ‘Well, HBO gave us this,’ and then AMC would go, ‘All right.’ And then to HBO, we’d be like, ‘AMC gave us this,’ and HBO’d go, ‘All right.’”
Following along with his baby every step of the way, Kirkman was able to make it obvious that his skills and understanding of the universe were something the folks at the top needed to have brought to the creative table, explaining:
“And I kept getting more access, more control, more involved in the project until I was in the writer’s room, I was full EP, I was with everybody making casting decisions. I was fortunate that those two places wanted it. And if I hadn’t had that, one of those two places probably would have been, ‘I don’t think we need this guy from Kentucky who’s never written television before. Maybe we’ll just go with the Oscar winning director’… Being in my own head and knowing what I know about Walking Dead, I was the guy that knew the most, I was pretty valuable in that room.
So it’s like I understand from their perspective how crazy the creators and authors and people seem. And so I can see their perspective, but at the same time, if any executives are out there watching Walking Dead was a pretty popular show and I cannot tell you how many times I was in a production meeting or a casting meeting or sitting in the writer’s room going, ‘I did this in the comic, this is how the audience reacted. If we do this in the show, this is how people will react,’ and that stuff was very valuable. So, I would say that there is tremendous value to keeping the original authors and creators involved in every step of the way.”
The Walking Dead is now streaming in its entirety on Netflix.
