Talking to Comic Book Resources, Kirkman said,

The thing that makes "The Walking Dead" unique and interesting is that it's a zombie movie that never ends – that's the log line or whatever. To do a zombie movie that's based on that? Kinda dumb. The whole idea behind the book is that it's a long-term exploration on the characters and their situation and how they're dealing with these problems over a long period of time, the different things that happen to the characters and how it affects and changes the characters. You can do that in a series of movies, but it's not ideal. It's not really common for people to go, "Oh, I'll buy this thing and commit to making 10 movies based on it!" So, the TV show makes way more sense to me for all of those reasons.

The creator, a partner at Image Comics since last year, also reassured fans of the comic that this won't replace the original series:

[The TV show will] be 110% faithful in tone, but I don't know that every single character will be exactly the same and I don't know if every single character will actually make it into the show, just because there are about 45 characters in the comic so far. But like I said, it's very early on in the process... If it goes past the pilot, I'll be writing episodes and looking over the storylines for the series and I'll be pretty hands on. I will be as hands on as working in comics will allow me to be. If it gets to a point where the work in comics is slowing up, I'll step back and leave [the series] in the very capable hands of whoever's working on the show... My main commitment is to the comics. I want to be the first guy in history that's gotten a movie or TV deal and continued to put out his comic series uninterrupted. As a fan, I hate it when it's like, "Oh, that's awesome, there's gonna be a TV show… and now the comic is gone. What the F!" I've already talked to Charlie Adlard [the artist of "The Walking Dead"] about it and we definitely want to keep the series without interruptions. So, that comes first.

The Walking Dead pilot, written and directed by The Shawshank Redemption and The Mist's Frank Darabont, is currently in pre-production. The Walking Dead comic series is available now.

Kirkman Talks "Walking Dead" TV [Comic Book Resources]

Variety reports that the cable station is close to inking a deal with Frank Darabont, writer and director of such films as The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption, to develop a cable series based on Robert Kirkman's popular series. The series begins several weeks after a zombie outbreak has left the United States in ruins, shutting down the country's infrastructure and killing most of the living population. Police officer Rick Grimes has woken from a coma, to find the world he once knew destroyed. He travels to Atlanta in search of his wife and son. There, he bands with a group of fellow survivors, and together they try to survive a world where the conveniences of modern life are a distant memory, and flesh-hungry zombies scour the land.

As over-exposed as zombies have become, there's plenty of reason to be excited for a Walking Dead television series. While humans certainly do fall to the zombies, the comic book series is no typical undead gorefest. It's about the things that happen after the apocalypse — about how the characters adjust to the new realities of their universe, and the decisions and changes they must make to survive. It's not a story that would work within the confines of a two-hour feature film, but on television it could offer a vision of the apocalypse that we don't usually see. And with Darabont at the helm, TV zombies could be as smartly depicted as 1960s advertising executives.

[Variety]

Talking to SciFi Wire, Darabont - also known for writing the screenplays for The Green Mile and The Shawshank RedemptionIndiana Jones screenplay ever - explained that his planned adaptation is currently awaiting judgment:

Fahrenheit is the thing I'm trying to get up next, which is casting-dependent, so it's one of those. [The script is] out to somebody at the moment, fingers crossed, because, boy, do I want to make that movie. I'm not giving up. I'll die in the traces before I don't make that movie... it's not one of those movies that are vastly expensive by any contemporary standard, but money is still money, and it's of a price that requires somebody that will justify that investment.

It all depends on the involvement of one bankable, but currently unnamed, movie star.

(Our bet? George Clooney. Don't ask us why, he just seems like the type of man we could see wanting to star in a Fahrenheit 451 movie, for some reason.)

While Darabont isn't about to give up, he does have a deadline in mind for the movie's birth... and we mean that literally:

I promised myself that it would at least go into production while Ray Bradbury were still with us... It's not like I think he's going to leave tomorrow, but he's not getting any younger.

We hope that the movie has a little more subtlety than that, personally.

Why director Frank Darabont says it's make-or-break time for his Fahrenheit 451 movie [SciFi Wire]

It is the most shocking ending ever and there should be a law passed stating that anybody who reveals the last five minutes of this film should be hung from their neck until dead.

So, here's the skinny. In King's original novella, there are five survivors who make it out of the mist in David Drayton's car: David himself, his son Billy, Amanda, and Mrs. Reppler. They've pulled into a Howard Johnson's, and only have enough gas left to get about 90 miles. David finds a radio in the manager's office, and thinks he hears a single word in the static, although it's never revealed what that word is. Then he heads out to the lobby where his son is sleeping on a mattress, whispers "Hartford" and "Hope" in his ear, and the book ends. You don't know if they make it or not, and depending on what sort of person you are, you either imagine that they get rescued or think the bizarre mist creatures chomped them for dinner.

Frank Darabont wasn't satisfied with that ending and wrote his own. He didn't veer that far out of line, though, because King definitely suggests Darabont's ending as one possibility. In the film, there are five passengers in Drayton's Scout. Dan Miller, who gets eaten by one of the creatures in the book but survives in the film, has been added to the mix. David has Amanda's pistol, which has only four bullets left in it. The Scout sputters and dies as it runs out of gas, and David silently exchanges glances with everyone in the car, except his sleeping son. They nod wordlessly at him, and he pulls out the revolver. As his son wakes up and stares in shock at his father, the view cuts to outside the vehicle and four shots ring out.

At this point, David loses it a bit, and how could blame him? He's just killed three people and his son at point-blank range in the back of his car, while surrounded by an eerie mist that contains creatures unlike anything the world has ever seen. It's a wonder he hadn't snapped before this point. He begins screaming and points the gun into his own mouth, but of course it's out of ammunition. He stumbles from the car, shouting for the creatures to take him. An ominous sound grows closer and closer. Finally from out of the mist bursts... a U.S. Army tank, and behind it scores of half-tracks and soldiers, killing every creature in sight. If only he'd waited five more minutes. He sinks to the ground and wails in agony as the view cranes up into the sky and finally fades out.

It's an extremely tragic ending, but we love it. Why? Because it's realistic, and not a happy little package all tied up in a bow. We can imagine the studio suits meeting over a conference table and trying to convince Darabont to give it a happy ending, with the cavalry riding in at the last possible second, and little Billy yelling "Hooray!" while the tanks roll by. Instead we're given the stark portrait of what the sheer madness of the situation would do to you, and what extremes it would drive someone to. Nice job, Mr. Darabont. And Mr. King, if you still want to hang us, don't worry. We always save a shell for ourselves.

The Mist marks the fourth time that director Frank Darabont has turned one of prolific horror writer Stephen King's short stories into a film, and you think he'd have it down to an art form after directing The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. However The Mist represents a rare misstep for the Darabont/King moviemaking machine, though it does make for good grossout eye candy.

The film centers around David Drayton (Thomas Jane), who lives with his wife Stephanie and 11-year-old son Billy in a small Maine town and makes his living painting movie posters for Hollywood. During the opening scene, there's a self-referential nod as Drayton appears to be painting a poster for King's series The Dark Towers, complete with Clint Eastwood as Roland of Gilead. When Stephen King movies start having in-joke nods to other Stephen King books, we hear the faint revving sounds of a motorcycle preparing to jump a shark somewhere.

A storm hits that night, smashing through David's studio window and wreaking general havoc. Just before he and some neighbors head into town to get supplies, they notice a thick white mist spilling over the lake from the direction of the nearby Army base. And as they drive to town, they encounter several Army vehicles leaving at high speed in the opposite direction. After getting trapped in a mist-surrounded grocery store with all the phones out and hazy giant things bashing on the doors, the guys start to get the idea that maybe something's gone wrong over at the old Army base.

The film (just like the novella) then devolves into a fire and brimstone battle in the grocery store, with Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden) calling this the "end of days" and telling everyone that god is raining down his retribution upon them. True, she sounds like a nutjob at first, but that first night enormous bugs begin landing on the glass windows, and it isn't much longer before giant pterodactyl-like creatures smash their way in and people start getting picked off left and right.

After they fight off this invasion, more and more people start believing Mrs. Carmody, and soon she is running the whole show, except for David and his lone band of holdouts. For a moment, the film hovers between fantasy and science fiction — will it turn out that this is a Satanic invasion, like in that forgettable movie with Hilary Swank? Finally, we discover that this isn't a supernatural occurrence after all. A bawling army private (Sam Witwer) confesses to Mrs. Carmody that the scientists at the army base were building a window into other dimensions, and that something must have gone wrong. Score one for science.

In an interesting move, Garabont makes us believe that Mrs. Carmody and her bible-beating are more dangerous than whatever awaits our heroes outside in the mist. Trapped between an evangelical and a bunch of Cthulhu creatures, David chooses monsters. We won't spoil the ending here, but it is very different than the one in the novella.

The main problem with the film is that the it is very clumsy and heavy-handed at times, clunking you over the head with an onslaught of stereotypes: the religious woman, the country bumpkins, the young lover, the "good father" and so on. Readers of King's fiction will already be familiar with these characters, but the introduction of multiple characters all in the same setting jumbles everything together. Plus the film's claustrophobic setting inside the store requires more complex characters to keep us watching. You soon find yourself longing for anyone to run outside and get eaten, just for a change of scenery.

Very Important Monster Rating: The larger monsters aren't displayed in very much detail, although there are plenty of closeups with the smaller ones. We would have loved a couple of solid looks at some of those big suckers.

Not only has he directed the upcoming The Mist, but he's also been a tad busy writing Fahrenheit 451, which he plans to direct, and doing things like penning part of Indiana Jones IV and producing the Andromeda Strain miniseries. He also some time last year to direct two episodes of The Shield, so when is he going to find the time, and what does he have planned for The Long Walk?

According to Darabont, it's a project that's been on the back burner for awhile, but so was The Mist, and you can go see that in theaters in just a few days. It sounds like his back burner is a bit more active than most people's furnaces.

Apparently star Andre Braugher isn't a big fan of the novel, "Crichton's book doesn't hold up to the test of time and so not much happens. When you go back to 1968 and read that book it's anti-climactic, period, so this is a re-telling of the story with the same premise." Let's hope fans of the novel aren't rankled too much by that. As long as he's nitpicking, he might as well say that the 1971 film based on the same novel doesn't hold up that well either. What's going to make their version so much better?

He's very stingy with the details, and basically only tells us that he's playing the military man who is brought in to deal with the situation, while Benjamin Bratt plays the "hot-headed scientist" who is trying to track down the virus. Does Benjamin Bratt have any roles where he isn't hot-headed? According to Braugher, the film will have some elements of Sphere in it (please dear god, let him mean the novel and not the awful movie version), and promises that the virus won't be benign as it is in the novel, but will be "malignant and on the loose."

Hear that folks? It's another "rampant virus on the loose" sci fi tale. Steel yourselves, and think about investing in a hazmat suit.

Braugher on Strain [Bloody Disgusting]

He claims that George Bush and the day and age of the Patriot Act have made this novel more important today than the day it was published, more than 50 years ago, and he's going to set it "50 years from today — whenever today is." Which means it could be 1950, 2000, or 2050. As long as he doesn't turn it into some sort of futuristic utopia in trouble, a la Minority Report or AI, we're all for it.

Of course that means we'll have to forgive leading man Tom Hanks for The DaVinci Code. We're fairly open minded, but that haircut ... ouch.

'Fahrenheit 451' Director Insists Book Is 'More Relevant Today,' Hopes To Shoot Adaptation In 2008 [MTV]