Actress and playwright Danai Gurira, who plays Michonne in The Walking Dead franchise, told SFX Magazine that she and showrunner Scott Gimple are talking about adapting The Walking Dead into a musical on Broadway.
"I was just joking around about having a Walking Dead musical on Broadway. Me and [Scott] Gimple are actually chatting about it, which is ridiculous," Gurira told SFX.
"He's just said we don't have the rights to it. I'm like, 'Well, let's talk to [Robert] Kirkman, see what he says to that.' I mean, we're really largely just joking around."
The Walking Dead would not be the first major television property to be adapted into a stage show. Stranger Things: The First Shadow, the stage show adapted from the Netflix show is currently running in the West End.
"It's about, how do you confine it to something? Because it's just so much story. So it would really be, how do you confine it to a good two-or-three-hour play?"
Danai Gurira is an award-winning playwright and actress. As a playwright, her works include In the Continuum (OBIE Award, Outer Critics Award, Helen Hayes Award), Eclipsed (Tony Award Nomination: Best Play; NAACP Award; Helen Hayes Award: Best New Play; Connecticut Critics Circle Award: Outstanding Production of a Play), and The Convert (six Ovation Awards, Los Angeles Outer Critics Award). Her play Familiar received its world premiere at Yale Rep in 2015, and premiered in New York at Playwrights Horizons in February of 2016. She is a recipient of the Sam Norkin Award at the 2016 Drama Desk Awards, a Whiting Award, a Hodder Fellow, and has been commissioned by Yale Rep, Center Theatre Group, Playwrights Horizons, and the Royal Court.
As an actor, Danai Gurira was most recently seen in Marvel's blockbuster phenomenon Black Panther as "General Okoye" and reprised the role in another blockbuster sensation Avengers: Infinity War in April 2018. Gurira stars as "Michonne" on AMC's The Walking Dead (NAACP Image Award nomination). Other select acting credits include the films All Eyez on Me (NAACP Image Award nomination), The Visitor, Mother of George and the NYS&F's Measure for Measure (Equity Callaway Award.)
Born in the US to Zimbabwean parents and raised in Zimbabwe, Danai Gurira holds an M.F.A. from Tisch, NYU and serves as an ambassador for Bono's ONE campaign. She is also the founder of LOGpledge.org, an awareness-building campaign focused on the plights of women and girls around the globe; and the co-founder of Almasi Arts, which works to give access and opportunity to the African Dramatic Artist. almasiartsalliance.org. Twitter/Instagram: @danaigurira. Facebook: @DanaiGuriraOfficial.
