IZOMBIE: Rob Thomas on Adapting Comic Series to TV

Thomas Discusses Adapting iZombie For The CW. The new CW series iZombie’s executive producer, writer and director, Rob Thomas, sat down for an interview with Variety. Thomas discussed adapting the comic book series into a television program as well as the network’s desire for a strong female lead.

When asked how iZombie will stand out from the current plethora of television programs based on comics and graphic novels Thomas said,

Most of the comicbook shows are driven by a superhero at the core — someone with some pretty incredible abilities. There’s some of that in our show, but it’s really about living life as a zombie: How would you go about your day if you were just sort of reanimated flesh? There’s a lot less ass-kicking in our show. There’s certainly some of it, but I don’t think we live or die in our superhero’s ability to kick ass. It’s like a character show about how you move on once everything in your life has been taken away from you.

When we talked about big-picture ideas for this show, there’s been a lot of talk about quarter-life crisis and we feel like we have the poster child for quarter-life crisis: Someone who did everything they were supposed to for 25 years and looked up and realized they have to start from scratch.

Thomas developed a die-hard fan base with his work on Veronica Mars. Thomas was asked about working on another show with a strong female lead and if it may broaden the series audience.

The driving force behind the show — or at least how it was pitched to me when Susan Rovner, the head of development at Warner Bros. TV, brought me the comicbook – was less about “CW really needs a zombie show. Let’s get that on the air.” The way they approached it was “CW needs the next kickass female lead on the network” and essentially the marching orders were “give us the new ‘Buffy,’ give us the new ‘Veronica Mars.

The CW is hoping that the debut of iZombie provides a boost to their mid-season ratings. The series is loosely based on Chris Roberson and Michael Allred’s comic book of the same name. iZombie stars Rose McIver, Malcolm Goodwin, Rahul Kohli, Robert Buckley and David Anders.The series makes its debut tonight and will run for 13 episodes.

Here is a series synopsis,

When over-achieving medical resident Liv Moore attends a party that turns into a zombie feeding frenzy, she ends up joining the ranks of the living dead. Determined to pass as human despite her pale appearance and newly listless demeanor, Liv forms a plan to resist her drive to consume fresh human brains by taking a job at a coroner’s office, where she can secretly snack on the brains of corpses delivered there. Soon discovering that she absorbs the memories of those she feeds on, she finds new purpose by posing as a psychic and working with a detective to help solve their murders.

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Source: Variety, IMDB