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That’s right, AMC has officially picked up The Walking Dead, the Frank Darabont adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s fantastic apocalyptic zombie comic book – The Walking Dead. I’m officially WAY too excited about this. I’m going to need to bring my expectations down to realistic levels.
In case you missed it (and I’m totally talking to you Darabont!) check out my casting picks from a couple months ago.
So I started writing this post back in August of 2009 when it was announced that AMC was going to be the home of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead, but there’s been a lot going on (despite the lack of gainful employment) and it took me a while to circle back and get to this. I was reminded that this post was sitting here waiting to be finished by the announcement last week that Frank Darabont’s pilot script had been greenlit by AMC …so here we are.
Plenty of other people, websites, and blogs have already taken a swing at casting The Walking Dead, but I’ve tried to avoid those posts so that I don’t corrupt my own instincts (and cheat off of those people). So take a look at what I’ve come up with – and get your own recommendations on the board in the comments section.
A couple of guidelines I used:
1. I tried to keep the casting fairly realistic, picking actors that I thought would be willing to be a part of an ensemble cast of the next (hopefully) highly acclaimed AMC television drama (i.e. you won’t see Angelina Jolie or Will Smith in here anywhere).
2. I tried to pick actors and actresses that fit the roles visually AND that had acting skills I admired. If I had to pick between skills and visuals, I usually went with skills.
RICK:
This one is honestly the easiest pick of the bunch, because I think Nathan Fillion is a just an obvious and yet inspired choice to play our hero Rick. Fillion has a great fan following already (and one that overlaps nicely with comics thanks to his Firefly/Serenity, and Buffy roles) and he’s a proven actor that can hold his own on the film screen, but isn’t opposed to doing television. Also, though his show Castle is very much “his” show, I feel like Fillion would recognize the great opportunity in The Walking Dead, like the opportunity of Mad Men, despite it being an ensemble cast. The fact that Castle is still on is a bit of a problem, but I see the ratings aren’t great…I don’t want it to fail, as I like Fillion and wish him the best…but man I’d like to see him playing Rick.
As an interesting side note, my mother used to watch One Life To Live (and General Hospital) when I was younger, and I got addicted to both shows, and never more so with One Life To Live than when Nathan Fillion was playing a GORGEOUS version of the character Joey Buchanan. I was so sad when he left the show (and I left watching it not long after) but MAN did the boy do well for himself. It’s one of the only things that makes me proud about having watched soaps at one point in my life. I’m all “I saw him and loved him first!”…and I’m almost never that far ahead of the crowd.
Wow. It’s really happening. AMC has bought the rights to Robert Kirkman’s series The Walking Dead. My favorite comic book of all time (even though I think Kirkman’s been phoning it in a bit over the last year).
Man, I can’t remember the last time I thought
“pleasedon’tfuckthisuppleasedon’tfuckthisuppleasedontfuckthisup” so hard.
AMC has been knocking it out of the park with Mad Men and Breaking Bad, so here’s hoping they’ve got at least one more home run in them.
