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The director of The Shawshank Redemption, Frank Darabont, will be behind a new TV series adapted from zombie comic books.

Today Variety reports that the eleven volume series, The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore, will be put onto the small screen by Darabont and Gale Anne Hurd.

The series will follow survivor of a zompocolypse (we’re testing that one out) called Rick Grimes as he tries to lead his family to safety, dodging zombies at every turn.

While the success of Charlie Brooker’s Dead Set will be infecting our screens for a second series, we’re wondering if a bigger scale zombie show could work on TV. High concept productions don’t seem to last long on TV anymore, flaming out around the second season *cough* Dollhouse *cough*.

Walking Dead be first aired in America on AMC and it’s a bit early to speculate which UK channel, if any, will pick up the show. Zombies and vampires seem to be getting a fair bit of airtime but we think the next big cult show should be either pirates or robots.