The Storytellers: How Dave Erickson And Robert Kirkman Went Off-Script With “fear The walking useless”

Drawing on the comic guide collection of the identical identify, The walking useless has informed five seasons worth of horrifying, compelling tales. on the other hand Robert Kirkman, the mastermind behind the comic and the television series, was once sure that there was once even more story to learn in regards to the zombie apocalypse, and he needed to create another outlet on tv to do so. in the hunt for a ingenious accomplice who shared his imaginative and prescient, Kirkman invited Dave Erickson on board the project as co-creator and showrunner of fear the walking dead. Erickson was once up for the problem and impressed that Kirkman wished to press the idea that further.

“i believe that it would be straightforward just to leisure in your laurels. The walking dead is a large success. The comic is a big success. the article about Robert that i admire is how he appeared back on the comic and looked back at the authentic incarnation of The walking lifeless and saw issues, saw parts that he had not had a chance to explore,” says Erickson, who has produced the tv collection Sons of Anarchy, Low winter sun, and Marco Polo. “i like the fact that he wanted to return and look at some totally different angles.”

the two men had worked collectively ahead of. Erickson wrote a pilot for a therapy Kirkman had written, and both loved the collaboration immensely. (The project, which preceded The walking useless, didn’t go any place.)

worry the strolling useless premiered on AMC August 23. here, Erickson talks to Co.Create about writing the pilot for with Kirkman, the liberty that they had in being inspired by way of but no longer tied to the comedian’s narrative, and the challenges their characters face in being confronted by means of—and having to kill—zombies that seem a lot extra human than those we see on The walking dead.

Co.Create: once I watched the pilot, i found myself talking out loud to the characters, trying to warn them, or inform them what to do.

Erickson: Yeah, and that is a big a part of the pilot and in reality the first season—it’s playing that recreation the place the target market knows greater than the characters do and strolling the line where, with a bit of luck, you’re leaning in, and also you’re anxious, and you’re anxious for them but by no means going to a place where you just wish to smack them for being stupid.

It certainly would have been straightforward to take just a few popular characters from The walking useless and build a new exhibit round them, but you’ve created new characters and a brand new situation set in l. a.. Why was it vital for you and Robert to begin from scratch in creating this new express?

We’ve seen the apocalypse throughout the lens of Rick Grimes and firm in Georgia, and we’ve by no means been ready to look at it during the eyes of other folks in an important metropolis like l. a..

How do you define the express? Is it a associate piece to The walking lifeless?

it is extremely a lot a accomplice piece, a parallel narrative, and we now have the identical mythological principles which are established within the comedian however a blank slate, which is thrilling, as a result of we will go any place. It’s fascinating because the burden—now not the burden—the challenge that i feel Scott Gimple [the chief producer of The walking lifeless] and firm have is they have got to search out how to take story components from the comics and change them simply enough so that they feel natural to the story [they are telling on television]. They do that good job of taking the comic, which is so liked, and finding how to remix it. That’s incredibly, extremely difficult.

We if truth be told have a great deal of freedom on this express as a result of we’re not tied to the comic. we are able to go and do whatever we wish, which is somewhat liberating.

associated: From “struggle Pope” To “The walking useless”: here’s Robert Kirkman’s strategy For creative Success

You and Robert wrote the pilot together. How did you even begin that course of? Did you exchange ideas via email? Did you get collectively and speak over coffee?

We found some office space, and we received together. Robert had written pages sooner than we even sat down. He had written a therapy. He had written a narrative. I imply, he had the Madison and Travis characters. [Played by Kim Dickens and Cliff Curtis, the couple are trying to blend their families.] He’d already invented them.

So we simply sat down and talked, and we had a few whiteboards, and we threw up concepts, and we structured and restructured issues.

We kind of would hand things off. i might write something and provides it to him, and he would take a cross at it, or he’d write one thing and give it to me, and that i’d take a pass at it.

What were the benefits of you and Robert writing the pilot together?

indirectly, you always write on my own. It wasn’t like we have been Billy Wilder and i.A.L. Diamond. We weren’t sitting together and typing together, however on any challenge, it’s good to be able where you in finding somebody that you are sort of inventive simpatico with, and if something shouldn’t be working, they will inform you it’s no longer working.

It’s always an add-on situation with Robert where he says something, and i say something, and then we give you one thing that’s, hopefully, higher than both of the unique concepts.

That’s the good worth of a writers’ room as smartly. Your assumptions are challenged, and ultimately, if it’s finished correctly, the concept that in the end wins is one thing that no person had considered except you put a bunch of people in a room and had them debating and arguing over different story factors. That, to me, is the advantage of working with others.

i guess you pulled collectively a writers’ room to write the rest of the episodes.

Yeah, we had a writing personnel. It used to be David Wiener, Jack LoGiudice, Meaghan Oppenheimer and Marco Ramirez. We ran the express the best way i might run any express. the adaptation used to be we actually put the room together after we wrote the pilot, and this is something that AMC is doing and different networks have performed, where you write the pilot, you put the room collectively, and also you begin breaking the season in anticipation of the order. by the time we finished writing the pilot and delivered the pilot, we had five episodes left to shoot, and we had four of them written.

It should have felt excellent to have those episodes prepared to move.

Yeah. It’s nice as a result of at that point, the community, they recognize what the show is, and they know where it’s going, and in the event that they’re supportive of it, you get to head shoot it, and it streamlines the method. i feel it’s better.

the first season of fear of the strolling dead is six episodes. Is there are merit to having fewer episodes to begin with?

That’s what they did for The walking lifeless. The problem for us used to be discovering a strategy to quilt the territory we would have liked to cover in six hours, and i believe we figured it out. You’ll see it shortly. We actually have a structural handle, which i believe allowed us to maintain the story intimate and preserve it keen on the family and in addition maintain the stress, the dread as they as they undergo their apocalyptic training.

Six is a good number. appear, you could end the world in a zombie exhibit in two hours in case you’re looking at a movie, so i feel six hours used to be a excellent amount. by the point we get to the top of the season, we’re nonetheless no longer caught up with Rick’s awakening within the pilot of the original express, so there may be panorama left to probe for us.

Going again to when you and Robert were writing the pilot and growing these core characters that we first meet, did actors for those roles pop into your head as you were writing, or do you consider casting later?

I very rarely write with an actor in mind. They were discovered right through the casting course of. the quality that Kim [Dickens, who plays Madison] has, the quality that Cliff [Curtis, who plays Curtis] has—you go in the course of the process, and also you learn a lot of people, and ultimately anyone leaps out, and also you see the character when they learn the traces.

It’s one thing to search out the fitting actor for the role. It’s some other thing to seek out two actors who actually have chemistry and make you consider that there’s a relationship there. That was once the case with Cliff and Kim. the first time Alicia and Nick [the brother and sister played by Alycia Debnam-Carey and Frank Dillane] learn together, that they had a connection as well, and that i believed that they were brother and sister and that they’d a historical past.

Did you and Robert feel any drive when you had been creating the convey to thrill the fanatics of The walking useless, to satisfy their expectations, or did you simply go into the process without factoring what lovers of the original series might assume or predict?

I’m very respectful of the enthusiasts as a result of i’m partial to the comic, and i’m keen on the unique express. We share the identical DNA as The walking lifeless. but when I went into the writers’ room each day looking to watch for what could or would possibly not work for the fanatics, that would be just a little bit stifling.

We share a lot with The strolling dead, but tonally we’re our own exhibit, and, hopefully, folks will respond to it. There’s enough for the lovers of the original to dig.

We created a exhibit based on the characters that we created, and the complications and challenges occurring of their lives, irrespective of the onset of the apocalypse. I imply, the problems and conflicts they’ve are going to be the problems and conflicts that they’re coping with all the way through the season and beyond. It’s simply exacerbated through the zombies. Robert says, ‘Your folks acquired divorced. Oh, there are zombies. You didn’t get requested to the promenade. Oh, there are zombies.’ i feel the reason the original show does so well and why the comedian is so successful is as a result of they are grounded in that admire.

talking of zombies, what elements did you imagine when creating the zombies in your show?

They’re surely completely different than the zombies on The strolling lifeless. We’re simply into the apocalypse. We’re in the first few days. So our walkers are infected, however they’re more human. naturally, they’re no longer right, however we’re no longer at a place yet the place there’s decay and atrophy. We’re not at a place yet where our zombies appear to be monsters.

in consequence, it makes it rather more challenging for our characters after they’re confronted with the aid of them as a result of their first instinct is not to pick up one thing heavy and bludgeon them—their first instinct is to take a look at to assist them, after which they realize they have got to run.

in reality, probably the most things that was necessary to Robert was the theory of violence. On the unique exhibit, and in most movies in the genre, you go from zero to apocalypse in the first reel, and the characters very quickly realize, “I need to kill with the intention to live to tell the tale.”

What used to be attention-grabbing with this convey was to head via a process where you’re confronted through somebody whom a day ago you could have had coffee with, a family member or a pal, and it’s physically tough to kill them. We’re making an attempt—even when our characters go to that location, and they do—to show the aftermath, how they rationalize killing and the way they reconcile it.