Editorials
Set Report Part 1: Bringing Kirkman’s ‘The Walking Dead’ to Life
Hands down the most anticipated horror project of 2010 is AMC TV’s The Walking Dead, a new series that’s set to premiere this coming October. Bloody Disgusting was lucky enough to spend a day on the set in Atlanta, Georgia to witness the great Frank Darabont (The Mist) filming the pilot episode. Adapted from Robert Kirkman’s astounding Image comic franchise, the project is set among a group of zombie survivors of an apocalypse who are led by a police officer, Rick Grimes, in search of a safe place to live. Each week over the next month we’ll be unrolling a new piece that’ll take you dear readers behind-the-scenes of what could be the horror event of the year. If “Breaking Bad” and “Mad Men” weren’t enough, are you willing to become one of “The Walking Dead”?
PREVIEW | PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 (new piece each week)
Zombies have enjoyed quite a resurgence over the past decade, from the emergence of speedy zombies in DAWN OF THE DEAD and 28 DAYS LATER (to the chagrin of some zombie purists) and on to the reemergence of zombie godfather George A. Romero with three new DEAD films to cap off the aughts. But for true flesh cravers, a few movies a year simply isn’t enough. If all goes well, longtime zombie lover Frank Darabont hopes to deliver your next dosage of undead on a weekly basis.
Based on the long-running comic by Robert Kirkman, THE WALKING DEAD will debut during AMC’s Fearfest this October. The critically acclaimed network hopes to see DEAD’s hero Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) landing Emmy nods alongside Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and Walter White (Bryan Cranston) this time next year. They also plan to set some new standards for the level of acceptable gore on television before all is said and done.
Along with Lincoln as Grimes, DEAD’s cast includes Jon Bernthal as Shane, Sarah Wayne Callies as Lori, Laurie Holden as Andrea and Emma Bell as Amy. Darabont will serve as executive producer as well as writer and director of the pilot; Kirkman will exec producer along with Gale Anne Hurd; and makeup master Greg Nicotero will make the zombies look, well, horrific. And if the first images we’ve seen so far are any indication, his work will be beyond anything else we’ve previously seen on television.
BLOODY-DISGUSTING spent a day sweltering on the Atlanta sets during production of the pilot episode. Over the course of our visit, we spoke to Darabont, Lincoln, Bernthal, Kirkman, Hurd and Nicotero. We got some background on the series’ development, bringing the production to Atlanta and what zombie school is all about. We even got to see a few zombies in the flesh and flip through some eerie, blood-soaked stills from production.
Part 1: Bringing Kirkman’s Walking Dead to Life
Like many projects these days, it all started with a trip to the comic shop. “He picked it up in a comic shop because somebody had told him it was a good zombie book and he loves all things zombie,” Kirkman says of Darabont’s initial discovery of the WALKING DEAD books. “He really enjoyed it and started asking around town and Hollywood to see what was going on with it and he found his way to my manager. That was a long time ago.”
Darabont first struck a deal up with NBC, but it wasn’t meant to be. “They were very excited about the idea of doing a zombie show until I handed them a zombie script where zombies were actually doing zombie shit,” laughs Darabont. “And so, after that I shopped it around and got a lot of doors slammed in my face is the truth of it. It languished for a bit, as things do in Hollywood.”
Enter Gale Anne Hurd. “I’d heard about it,” Hurd tells press. “When I first read the book, I thought, ‘This would be a great film’ and boy was I wrong. It’s a much better TV series. Fast forward, I knew that Frank had initially developed it for NBC, which to me seemed like an odd pairing for this. Then I heard it wasn’t going forward at NBC, so I talked to Frank.”
“Gale was tremendously instrumental in jump-starting it at a point where it felt like it was languishing,” says Darabont. “I’d gotten turned down enough times, which is no reflection on the material, but no matter what you’re trying to sell in Hollywood, you’re Willy Loman and it’s DEATH OF A SALESMAN. You’re out there trying to sell shit that nobody wants. Even if it’s good shit.”
DEAD is the first work of Kirkman’s to be adapted and, considering the pedigree attached, he’s pretty pleased with the way things have gone. “I was telling Gale the other day, ‘This is the first thing I’ve had adapted and I have no sense of what this is actually like because Frank is the director, Gale Anne Hurd is the producer,” says Kirkman. “The stuff that AMC is going to put on air is crazy. They keep showing me things and I’m like, you’re not doing that. They rip a horse open and there’s just spaghetti coming out. They actually have things that you see.”
Though the adaptation is by no means a frame-for-frame WATCHMEN-style translation, Kirkman says DEAD is very faithful to his original work and, in some cases, might even improve on his ideas. “Reading that pilot was just a revelation,” says Kirkman. “It’s extremely faithful. There are things that are so much like the comic, I can’t really remember the nuance of what’s different and what’s not from the comic. He’s definitely being more faithful than I expected and everything that he’s changing is brilliant. I couldn’t be happier. I think the fans of the book are going to just love it.”
Darabont wrote the pilot episode and will also direct. Five other directors will then take the reigns for the initial six-episode run. “We have six different directors,” confirms Hurd. “We haven’t announced who they are yet. Frank can’t direct them all because obviously we have a very tight post production schedule. But he will be here on set and as executive producer, which is the case with most show runners, for every episode. The biggest problem was to say, ‘Frank, we cannot clone you and you can’t where all these hats.’”
“I have to put my pilot through the editing and post process,” adds Darabont. “Plus I’ve got to get back to L.A. and kind of ride heard on the writers generating the subsequent episodes. I’ve written the first two. I’ve got four scripts yet to come in and time is getting short. My intention is not to be an absentee landlord. I love this thing and I really want to keep my hand very much in the process. I don’t want to be one of those guys who gets a show set up, directs the pilot and then buggers off and is never heard from again.”
Darabont wrote the first two episodes. And Kirkman himself will pen Episode 4. “He’s terrific,” says Hurd of Kirkman’s script work. “For a first-timer, all those years writing comic books was great training. We also have Chic Eglee who most recently came from DEXTER and before that THE SHIELD and DARK ANGEL. And also Jack LoGiudice who came to us from SONS OF ANARCHY and Adam Fierro, who actually wrote the episode of THE SHIELD that Frank directed. And Glen Mazzara, who’s also from THE SHIELD.”
If the series succeeds, Season Two will be AMC’s normal 13-episode order. Darabont says it’s likely he’ll return to write and direct some of those episodes as well. Despite confidence that the series will be well received, Darabont says he’s not getting ahead of himself. The most important thing now is to deliver the best six episodes possible. From what we’ve seen so far, WALKING DEAD should be a real treat for horror fans.
Five decades ago, Stephen King published the story of a bullied girl with telekinetic powers and forever changed the world of horror.
Carrie follows a high school misfit who seeks revenge for a hideous prank by psychically destroying her senior prom. The name Carrie White has become synonymous with the concept of a formal dance thanks to a flawless adaptation from Brian De Palma. Now fifty years after the film’s release, Mike Flanagan is putting his own stamp on the troubling story.
Rather than a feature film, the writer/director will expand King’s relatively slim debut novel into an eight-episode miniseries for Amazon Prime set to premiere on October 7.
Flanagan is no stranger to the world of Stephen King. A long-time Constant Reader, he first made waves with his daring adaptation of Gerald’s Game (2017), a novel many fans considered un-filmable. His underrated Doctor Sleep merges the disparate plot of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining with King’s original source material, and his 2024 genre-bending tearjerker The Life of Chuck faithfully executes one of the author’s most metaphysical novellas.
He’s currently mired in pre-production for an expansive adaptation of The Dark Tower series, keystone to King’s connected universe, and Warner Bros. recently announced that Flanagan will helm a new version of The Mist, King’s 1980 novella which sees a small Maine town overrun by otherworldly monsters.
Considering the vast array of the author’s previously unadapted material, an obvious question arises. Why reimagine Carrie in 2026? Noting the timeless nature of the content, Flanagan expressed his desire to bring the story of a bullied girl into modern times, mirroring his approach to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. He explained, “The only way to approach it was to build something new out of the ingredients of Carrie. Otherwise, there’s really no purpose in trying to retread ground that’s been so beautifully walked before.”
His miniseries will maintain the novel’s bloody bookends while delivering “big surprises” along the way.
A New Prom Night Nightmare
The roughly 60-second teaser introduces Summer H. Howell as Carrie White just before the moment of catastrophe. Standing in a prom dress, she smiles at her applauding classmates with an ominous crown perched upon her head. Moments later, Carrie unleashes a rage-filled scream into the night air while promgoers rush for the exit doors. But careful examination of this scene shows Carrie wearing a different, albeit dirty dress as she seems to telekinetically punish her peers.
In an exclusive first look with Entertainment Weekly, Flanagan explains that in his version of the story, “the events of that prom are going to be completely different.” An open trunk emitting a crimson glow does hint at the pig’s blood dumped on Carrie’s head, but it’s likely Flanagan’s formal dance will be a different kind of horror altogether. Despite these changes, the series may end with the widespread destruction outlined in the source material. Unlike any previous adaptations, King’s novel ends with the near-total destruction of Chamberlain, Maine. A flaming street in Flanagan’s trailer promises similar carnage no matter what prank sparks Carrie’s deadly revenge.
The Monstrous Addition of Social Media
On the opposite end of this fiery conclusion is an extreme act of bullying that brings together the story’s main cast. King’s novel begins as Carrie gets her first period while showering in the girls’ locker room. Completely unaware of the concept of menstruation, the sheltered girl thinks she’s bleeding to death. Her classmates respond with vitriolic rage. Led by ultra-mean girl Chris Hargensen (Alison Thornton), they mock the terrified teen while pelting her with tampons. Glimpses of this disturbing event reveal that Flanagan has excised the scene’s nudity while adding a seismic update. As Carrie sobs in the shower stall, Chris and her friends film the breakdown with their phones.
Other scenes note the presence of social media, bringing King’s fifty-year-old story into the digital age.
Flanagan’s adaptation promises to explore the destructive power of social media, an often invisible entity with a potential for harm rivaling Carrie’s own powers. While King’s tormented heroine suffers in front of a small group of girls, Flanagan’s version of the incident will likely become a viral video, potentially circling the globe on social media. Similar to Katt Shea’s criminally underrated The Rage: Carrie 2, which includes elements of revenge porn exploitation, Flanagan’s modern retelling will distinguish itself by exploring the nebulous cruelty of online bullying, a force ten times more powerful than the irl pranks King first envisioned.
A Completely Reimagined White Family
In addition to modernizing these canon events, Flanagan hints at updates to Carrie’s oppressive upbringing at the hands of her mother, Margaret White (Samantha Sloyan). Dead before the novel begins, we never meet Carrie’s domineering father Ralph, known to carry a bible alongside his gun. Flanagan’s White household will be an altogether different beast. In his version of the story, Carrie and her mother have been hidden away in the unassuming home, forced out of hiding by Ralph’s unexpected death. Perhaps we will finally meet this elusive man whose shadow hangs over his wife and child. Considering the White family’s fundamentalist lifestyle, this reimagining hints at tradwife culture and a home ruled by staunch patriarchal control.
Whereas King’s Carrie has been tormented by her classmates since Kindergarten, Flanagan’s Carrie will be a wide-eyed newcomer to public school, eager to make friends and engage with her peers. We glimpse Carrie cozying up to Chris and the equally popular Sue Snell (Siena Agudong) as she navigates a new social scene. Of course, we know this kindness is part of an elaborate plot designed to lull Carrie into a false sense of camaraderie, setting up an atrocious act of public humiliation. These brief moments of feigned compassion put Sue’s own complicity into question. Will Flanagan’s version of the character find the courage to defend Carrie from vicious bullies or will she succumb to peer pressure and join in the mob mentality?
Perhaps the biggest deviation from King’s original text is the relationship between Carrie and her mother. King’s Margaret White is a horrifically abusive religious zealot whose worldview has been hardened by internalized misogyny. She shames Carrie for menstruating, locks her in a closet to “pray,” and regrets not killing her child in infancy. She’s also responsible for Carrie’s social ostracization. Known to berate her neighbors for their “sins,” Margaret forces her daughter to live by an extreme code of conduct and disallows any potential friends lest they corrupt the girl with their worldly ways.
Flanagan’s version of the character is perhaps just as much a victim as Carrie herself. Also trapped inside her home, his Margaret is overly vigilant, her own trauma manifesting as strict control. Describing a more sympathetic depiction of the iconic villain, Flanagan explains, “Our Margaret White is a woman who fiercely loves her daughter and wants to protect her from this world … [She] doesn’t know how to do that and thinks the way to protect her is to close her off; not punitively, but to create this private utopia.”
Despite this potential softening, Sloyan’s Margaret may still have a sharp edge. Though she has appeared in many Flanagan projects, from Hush (2016) to The Fall of the House of Usher (2023), she is best known for her role as the abhorrent Bev Keane in the poignant saga Midnight Mass (2021). Perhaps inspired by King’s Margaret White, Bev is pious and sadistic, willing to punish anyone who does not adhere to her warped approximation of Catholicism.
Flanagan specifically wrote Margaret with Sloyan in mind, likely remembering the actress’s eerie ability to create deceptive empathy and shift our allegiances on a dime.
Expanding Stephen King’s Telekinetic Universe
While most of King’s story deals with an unthinkable prom night in Chamberlain, Maine, large sections of the semi-epistolary novel see experts debating the nature of telekinesis. Do Carrie’s frightening abilities represent a new phase in human evolution or is the prom night carnage merely a fluke? King settles the debate with a shocking denouement in which a young mother recounts her infant daughter’s ability to dangle her crib toys in midair. We’re left to wonder if she will become another tormented girl who surprises the world with metaphysical strength.
Flanagan plans to build out this brief scene while amplifying themes of female empowerment. After introducing our main cast of characters, episode two will open with an unrelated story in which we meet another girl with the TK gene. Each subsequent chapter will expand this world, building out a roster of telekinetic young women. Considering King’s fondness for stories about powerful kids, often described as possessing “the shining,” Constant Readers will no doubt have their eyes peeled for various Easter Eggs nodding to the author’s vast catalogue.
Giving Carrie Her Own Voice
Perhaps the most striking distinction in Flanagan’s new trailer is the extent to which we hear Carrie’s voice. The sneak peek is fully narrated by the titular prom queen as she demands accountability. “I want to know why,” she explains while detailing Chris’ elaborate plan. Aside from the aforementioned coda, King’s book essentially ends with the aftermath of the prom night tragedy, leaving little time for Carrie to reflect. His shifting narrative does bring the reader into her fragile mind, though not before she’s been cowed by relentless cruelty. We watch Carrie sink into bloodthirsty revenge, but never hear a considered desire for justice or repair.
Flanagan’s original monologue allows Carrie to voice her pain and mourn the life she could have had. We’re also treated to a mug shot-style photo of Chris with a bruised and bandaged face, implying that the mean girl will have to answer for her senseless sadism.
Flanagan is known for filling his series adaptations with heartwrenching speeches that cut to the heart of his thematic intentions, and this teaser seems to follow suit. After years of fans, critics, and scholars analyzing Carrie’s pain, perhaps his modern retelling will offer the titular anti-hero a chance to finally speak for herself.
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