An interesting story was brought to my attention this morning, Shock Till You Drop talks about what Frank Darabont envisioned in Season 2 Walking Dead, this originated from a communication to Aint it Cool News.
I nearly did drop with shock - 'Darabont's' idea is straight out of my zombie horror Dead Pulse. Granted Dead Pulse is a homage to Romero, but Dead Pulse is an original piece of work. I should also mention I've never read the Walking Dead Comics.
Before I go on here's a little background to what happened last year. After the Comic Con in 2011 Ben Davis, AMC vice-president of scripted programming, gathered the cast together for a meeting. In this meeting, he told that Darabont had been fired. Saying “This isn’t working.” And Darabont was 'let go'.
Part of Darabont's concept explained to Ain't It Cool News is a follows:
"We’d start with a squad of maybe seven or eight soldiers being dropped into the city by chopper. They have map coordinates they need to get to; they’ve been told to report to a certain place to provide reinforcement. It’s not a special mission, it’s basically a housekeeping measure putting more boots on the ground to reinforce key intersections and installations throughout the city. And we follow this group from the moment the copter sets them down. All they have to do is travel maybe a dozen blocks, a simple journey, but what starts as a no-brainer scenario goes from “the city is being secured” to “holy shit, we’ve lost control, the world is ending.”
Our squad gets blocked at every turn and are soon just trying to survive. I wanted to do a really tense, character-driven ensemble story as communications break down, supply lines are lost, escape routes are cut off, morale falls apart, leadership unravels, mutinies heat up, etc." and goes on to say,
"So the story follows these soldiers through hell as the city falls apart and the squad implodes, with Sam’s soldier being the main character and the moral center of the group. He becomes the last survivor of the squad, and he finally gets to the map coordinates they’ve been trying to get to from the start."
I have a great deal of respect for him but this raises a lot of questions for me, especially given that my story was banded around 'Tinsel Town'. Prior to the zombie boom!
It's odd that through a series of unfortunate events that my story (written in 2007) that contains the above was erroneously published in 2009, I would mention the book because I wouldn't want any one to purchase it in that state, it's unedited and incomplete (and goes for around $156 - Do not buy this!) I know what your thinking convenient, this book is hard to get. Well no, in March 2011 Dead Pulse was published on paperback and on a variety of e-book platforms and contains the very same segments from the 2007 albeit expanded, edited correctly and this time authorised. Anyone who has read Dead Pulse will immediately realise that Frank's description bares a striking similarity to the Ravenswood massacre chapter where a small group of the soldiers are sent to the city on what should be a simple mission to retrieve information and goes terribly wrong.
Without speculating or alleging too much the cast of The Walking Dead were told Frank was fired by 'scripted programming' section. I can by default see why 'his' wild card' didn't make it into Season 2 with the uncanny resemblance to Dead Pulse.
Without speculating or alleging too much the cast of The Walking Dead were told Frank was fired by 'scripted programming' section. I can by default see why 'his' wild card' didn't make it into Season 2 with the uncanny resemblance to Dead Pulse.
To get a feel of Dead Pulse's tone and to see some of the similarities here's the trailer or for curiosity get the book free with Amazon prime here: