Summary
- Danai Gurira doubts a Walking Dead Broadway musical, but jokes about discussing it with Scott Gimple.
- Musical episodes differ from full Broadway shows; confining The Walking Dead 's story in a three-hour play is challenging.
- The Walking Dead doesn't need a musical spin-off; it's unlikely due to cost and uncertain financial return.
The Walking Dead’sDanai Gurira has shared her unconvinced opinion on the idea of the zombie franchise branching out into the world of Broadway musicals in the future. The series must be one of the few recent TV dramas that never featured a “musical” episode, and while there is still time for that to happen, the thought of taking The Walking Dead to the stage is one that Gurira says she has "jokingly" discussed, but doubts will happen.
While musical episodes usually diverge from the path of straight-up drama, and take a flight of fancy into a storyline that has a backbeat and some well-choreographed dance moves, so far there have been no dancing zombies found in The Walking Dead. This could be for a very good reason – no one wants to be cleaning up that dance floor when a load of decomposing bodies have been cutting movies like they are auditioning for a remake of Michael Jackson’s Thriller video.
As unlikely as it seems, though, Gurira recently revealed to SFX Magazine, that the subject has come up in conversation with Walking Dead chief creative officer Scott Gimple. Fans of these off-script musical interludes maybe shouldn’t hold their breath about The Walking Dead getting musical on stage or screen just yet. She said:
“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.
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. But stranger things have been done, and I do love the theatre… 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?”
The Walking Dead Does Not Need any Musical Spin-Off
Whether it is in an episode of one of The Walking Dead’s growing number of spin-offs, or on the bright-lit stages of Broadway, there is nothing to suggest that bringing a musical influence to the franchise is the right thing to do. Sometimes, it works. Other times, it doesn’t. In most cases, the shows incorporating musical episodes tend to be some of the best received – such as was the case three decades ago in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and in the recent episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
There is a world of difference between slotting a few popular songs into a TV show and producing a full Broadway stage show. As Gurira noted, there is a question of how you would go about cramming the story of The Walking Dead into a one-shot, three-hour show that can deliver something audiences want to go back to again and again. Clearly, there would be a hefty cost for such a venture, and without guarantees of a scarily good financial return, we can say fairly confidently that there will unfortunately be no musical Walking Dead project coming anytime soon.
