Just like the zombies of the venerable Walking Dead franchise have begun to evolve, so, it seems, has the franchise itself. Before the last eight episodes of the flagship TV show premiere in October, AMC will debut the six-episode anthology series Tales of the Walking Dead this Sunday, which not only looks at new characters, places, and times in the TWD universe but also explores different tones. The surprisingly star-studded show will even include some zombie comedy, but it sounds like Tales’ second season could be even weirder.
Showrunner Channing Powell told Entertainment Weekly that a musical episode of the show has been written, there just wasn’t enough time to make it part of season one: “We did come up with a musical episode, that just for production reasons was going to be a little bit too difficult to film. … Should we get a season two or three, I’m going to push for that one if I can. It lives in my heart and in my mind.”
Having watched over a decade of The Walking Dead Original Recipe, it’s extremely hard for me to imagine a funny — well, an intentionally funny — episode of a TWD show, let alone a musical. Would it be an episode about people producing a musical when the dead first start shambling around? Would the zombies dance? Would they sing? The franchise has been hinting at the arrival of “variant” zombies, who are faster and smarter than the others. Will they have the power to form a chorus line?
Of course, there’s no guarantee that this musical episode will make it into Tales season two, but I definitely am appreciating the idea was on the table at any point, frankly. Let’s send Maggie and Negan to NYC, Daryl to France, and Rick and Michonne from theatres into their own miniseries. And then let’s put tap shoes on all the zombies. Why not?! And if you want to get an idea of how wild Tales is going to allow itself to be, the show premieres on August 14.
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