In fact, not only won’t Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman tell the network that runs the hit show based on his comic, he won’t tell showrunner Scott Gimple what’s going happen in the comics, either. The crazy thing is that Gimple is such a TWD fan, he doesn’t want to know.
Image: AMC
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly about the communication between the comics side of The Walking Dead and the TV side, Kirkman said this:
No, there’s no communication whatsoever. They have no approval over what happens in the comic. Scott Gimple is an avid reader of the comic, and prefers to experience the comic book as a reader, so he gets the advance issues as they’re published, but he doesn’t read scripts. He gets mad at me if I give him any kind of indication as to what’s coming, because he doesn’t like spoilers. So, they’re kind of a hundred per cent in the dark, which I guess is pretty remarkable, and I would probably say it’s a testament to the trust that AMC has in me. I mean, I guess to a certain extent, at this point, the comic book is kind of a workshop of future seasons of the show, and it’s fun to think that I can just completely torpedo the story if I wanted to.
It’s nice to think that there’s a person whose job it is to adapt an ongoing story who doesn’t want to take advantage of his position to get spoilers. It’s almost cute to imagine Scott Gimple covering his ears and going “LALALALALA” whenever he thinks that might happen.
Kirkman added that he knows “exactly how it ends” and he’s “always taking baby steps toward that point as I’m telling the story”. So maybe, if you look hard enough at the comics, you can figure it out. Just don’t tell Gimple.