Robert Kirkman Explains The Process Of Adapting The Walking Dead To TV

In promotion of The Walking Dead‘s sixth season debuting this Sunday on AMC, series writer and creator, Robert Kirkman, appeared Late Night with Seth Meyers. Among the topics the Kirkman and Meyers discussed was Kirkman’s experience adapting his hit Walking Dead comic into a television series.

“It’s at times an awkward process,” Kirkman told Meyers. The Walking Dead‘s 150th issue hits shelves in January, so you would think the folks at AMC would trust Kirkman’s judgement with just about every aspect of the story, right? Wrong! “We are adaptaing the comic book series and I’m in a room with them, so it’s me, in a room with eight people, and I’ll go, ‘Well, we did this in the comic,’ and they’ll go, ‘Well, this won’t work,’” Kirkman explained. “Often times they’re right,” Kirkman admitted.

Kirkman joked about the process, saying, “It’s eight people tearing apart work I did five years ago!”

“Every now and then I jump in and say, ‘This is awful, we’ve gotta do this. We’ve gotta change this,’” Kirkman said of his re-working his story for television. Sounds like the severance of Rick’s hand fits that description. “It’s a really strange experience,” Kirkman says.

Kirkman also explained why he enjoys working on The Walking Dead so much. “I think most zombie movies are about interesting people doing interesting things, fighting zombies, and then the time runs out and they’re like, ‘Well that was a lot of fun. We’re all gonna die now!’” the writer explained. “I wanted to do a story about how these people continue to survive, and find food, and how messed up it makes them over time.”

The Walking Dead returns this Sunday at 9 PM EST on AMC.