The Walking Dead almost wound up on NBC as a procedural about solving weekly zombie crimes.
Back when current juggernaut property The Walking Dead was only just an indie comic book series about the seemingly generic premise of a zombie apocalypse, it’s understandable that pitches to networks about a TV adaptation would be met with different industry-minded ideas. However, it seems that folks from a certain Big Three network imagined Rick Grimes and company proud as a peacock while nabbing undead crooks every week.
Addressing the audience at the Edinburgh International TV Festival at a masterclass, The Walking Dead executive producer Gale Anne Hurd recalled a rather humorous anecdote from the project’s nascent days. The then-would-be TV series adapting Robert Kirkman’s comic book series, still under the auspices of show creator Frank Darabont, received some crucial facetime with executives at NBC with whom the show initially had an overall deal. Hurd recollects a stupendously surreal question asked by an unnamed executive upon hearing Darabont's pitch (via Variety.):
“Do there have to be zombies [in it].” NBC then asked Darabont if the show could be a procedural in which the two main protagonists would “solve a zombie crime of the week.”
While Darabont walked into that room carrying gravitas from writing and directing acclaimed films such as The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, his pitch for The Walking Dead was nevertheless met with incredulous feedback reflecting a stereotypically in-the-box mindset and a lack of understanding of the property. According to Hurd, what seemed to vex the NBC exec is the rather basic notion that is still primarily the ethos of the TWD mythology itself as the (already spun-off) show readies Season 7: ““It’s not about the zombies it’s about the humans.”
Take the Den of Geek 2016 Reader Survey for a Chance to Win a $100 Amazon Voucher Right Here!
To an NBC executive who sees small screen success safely accomplished with the kind of weekly procedural formula that made the network’s five shows under the Law & Order banner a perpetual mainstay, a show set in a world of zombies needs a safer structural framework. What better framework could there be in the world of network television than crime? Of course, the point that such a mindset misses is that the crux of The Walking Dead– a title we now know refers to the survivors themselves – is the dark, primal path on which Rick Grimes and company have been set because of their zombie-filled world, not the threat of the zombies themselves – even if said zombies had the will and dexterity to pull off undead capers.
Of course, fate would (thankfully,) not see that array of ambulatory crime-corpse recidivism in the NBC version of The Walking Dead manifest. It actually puts things into perspective, especially with folks still sour over the way AMC and the showrunners handled the Season 6 cliffhanger controversy surrounding the mystery of which unlucky lineup customer got the prize of a barbed-wire-bat to the head. In retrospect, not knowing who got “Lucilled” is a far better problem with which to contend.
The Walking Dead returns on October 23 on AMC, revealing the truth behind a different kind of zombie apocalypse crime in which the forensic evidence includes the smashed skull of a beloved cast member.
