iZombie Ordered to Series at The CW

Veronica Mars

creator Rob Thomas has a new comic book project officially headed to The CW. Based on the Vertigo comic books by Chris Roberson and Mike Allred, iZombie is the third DC-published comic book series confirmed to be headed to TV this week, following the long-expected season orders of Gotham and The Flash. In the series, a med student-turned-zombie takes a job in the coroner's office to gain access to the brains she must reluctantly eat to maintain her humanity, but with each brain she consumes, she inherits the corpse's memories. With the help of her medical examiner boss and a police detective, she solves homicide cases in order to quiet the disturbing voices in her head. It's a loose adaptation of the comics, in which the lead character had a different name and was a gravedigger rather than a med student. Co-creator Chris Roberson, who has generally been enthusiastic about the series, doesn't seem to mind the alterations. "I've read the script for the pilot, and it seems like it will make for good television," Roberson said during a recent Reddit AMA. "The core concept is the same as our comic, but they've used it as the basis for a new character and situation. I very much look forward to seeing how it turns out!" When asked further down the page what level of involvement he had with the project, Roberson clarified, "beyond a set visit next month, I haven't had any direct involvement with the show." In a recent interview, writer and Executive Producer Rob Thomas admitted that he wouldn't be adapting the comic directly, but was essentially taking the concept and running with it. "They want a new, sort of cool lead for The CW," Thomas admitted. "So they are asking me to write it in the tone that I normally write. It will not be 'Zombie Apocalypse Show;' it will be fun, cool, smart, funny single-female lead who happens to be a zombie. She has to eat brains in order to survive….We're not sticking that close to the comics; the thing we're taking from the comic is this mid-20s female zombie who eats brains and gets the memories of the dead…but we put her in a coroner's office so there's a case-of-the-week where she gets snippets of memories of the deceased and tries to solve the crime." Rose McIver leads the cast, which also includes Malcolm Goodwin, Alexandra Krosney, David Anders, Robert Buckley, Nora Dunn and Ruhul Kohli. The series was adapted by Thomas and his Veronica Mars producing partner Diane Ruggiero, expanding their relationship with the network, with whom they will also release a Veronica Mars spinoff miniseries on the digital CW Seed platform.