Fiercely Independent

Okay, now I’m a little irked.  We hadn’t talked about it publicly, but David and I had been talking with AMC about producing a companion web series for AMC’s The Walking Dead.  This started when I met Frank Darabont and spoke with him about producing a separate series for the web that shows off more of the world that Robert Kirkman had created in the comic series.  He liked the idea and gave me the contact info for the person at AMC that we would need to talk to.  We contacted them, wrote a proposal which detailed our thoughts on the series itself and potential story lines and sent it out to them.  They liked it and the idea, and they told us that they needed to run it past Frank and Robert, who would probably need to write it since David and I aren’t WGA.  They asked if we would be willing to handle the production of the web series even if we couldn’t write it.  Being fans of both the book from it’s start and the show, we responded with an emphatic yes - yes of course we would.  

This was in January - ish.  Frank was on holiday vacation and they hadn’t started to break down Season 2 yet in the writer’s room.  We waited to hear back, I constantly tried to touch base with Robert Kirkman and Gale Hurd (the producer of the show) via Twitter in order to continue the conversation about it.  Neither responded, which makes sense as I don’t run in Hollywood circles.  Frank got fired from the show - or left due to creative differences - or however all parties want to spin it.  I thought Frank’s leaving the show was terrible, but I recognized that it might allow us to produce the web series from top to bottom.  

Now I find out that AMC has produced a web series which, although is not based on any of the specific stories that we pitched to them (although you can certainly see elements), it is definitely based on our proposal and strategy.  I’m interested in hearing what people think we should do next.  Just accept that that’s how studio and networks do business in mainstream broadcast and film and roll over about it?  Call our AMC contact and see if there’s other opportunity there for more seasons of the web series that we would actually produce?  I especially want to hear from other new media people as to what their next steps would be if it were them.  

David and I had been very hush hush about this whole process for a few reasons - mostly though, it’s because we’re both superstitious that if we talk about a project before it’s actually locked in place, it puts a jinx on that project ever actually happening.  Stupid I know, but what can I say?  We’ve had stuff go down like that in the past.  Now, however, I want to put our whole process out there - partly because I’m really frustrated and disappointed right now with AMC for not at least getting back to us on this, but also because I want to learn what other independent web producers would do.  

David and I love The Walking Dead and really had some creative ideas for stories in that world.  Yes, we are super indie and I don’t have any real desire to ever produce in the studio system, but Robert’s book is one of the few I would change that attitude to do.  So I think over the next few weeks I’ll be putting out there what we were thinking about doing with a Walking Dead web series and maybe even putting up two different versions of a short film that we did after talking with AMC that could live in Robert and Frank’s world.  I always welcome questions and comments and will try to answer them as quickly as I can.  

-Matthew