Frank Darabont circles zombies

This has to be the best news for a summer full of great news about what will be on tap for TV this upcoming season and the future. Frank Darabont has just inked a deal with cable channel AMC to adapt and bring to the small-screen Robert Kirkman's epic zombie apocalypse comic book series published by Image Comics. There's always been talk that Kirkman was in talks with some power players in Hollywood to bring to TV his zombie series, but no one knew if it would be a series on network TV or cable.

Network TV would've given the series a much wider audience, but the mature and violent nature of the stories in The Walking Dead would've had to be diluted for the show to ever make the air. This is an ongoing story about surviving in a zombie post-apocalyptic world. The gore and violence would be something that couldn't be dumbed down or kept away from audiences' eyes. One other option was for one of the two premium cable channels (HBO or Showtime) to pick up the series and adapt it faithfully with violence, harsh language, sex and gore intact. The only stumbling block from one of these two cable giants from picking it up was their schedule line-up already quite packed of series still popular and bringing in the high ratings.

After little news from Kirkman about the status of his series either becoming a tv series or (fans dreaded) a film adaptation, now comes word from Variety that Frank Darabont seems to be the one who has either licensed or bought the tv rights to adapt The Walking Dead from Kirkman and now has inked a deal with cable channel AMC to bring it to cable. While it's not premium cable where anything goes, it is still AMC which has followed the template set down by FX channel about how to bring a mature-audiences series to cable and get away with enough to compete with the likes of HBO and Showtime.

Production hasn't begun as Darabont with producing partners Gale Anne Hurd and David Alpert are still shopping around for a studio to work with. But with the current popularity of zombies in entertainment and with Kirkman's epic series considered one of the best and hottest non-superhero properties in the comic book industry I am very confident that the show will land with a studio and casting and filming will begin in earnest.

Now let the casting rumours begin!