Robert Kirkman on Season 5 & Outcast

Check out this great piece by the Hollywood Reporter where Robert Kirkman discusses Outcast, his newest comic coming out this June, along with the escalations we can expect in The Walking Dead Season 5 and how he’s finally cemented the end of The Walking Dead.

Here’s an excerpt of the interview:

With The Walking Dead, the current comics arc has started a new story after a time jump where Rick has re-established part of a larger society. Do you already know how that story ends? How has prepping Outcast, where you know the ending, impacted what you’re doing with Walking Dead?

I’ve known roughly how The Walking Dead [comic] ends for a while now. It’s something that I took my time figuring out but I always knew the direction I was going in. A few years ago the end cemented itself. But that’s something that is very far off into the future and it’s an ending that doesn’t really work unless I take my time getting there. I feel like, as with Outcast, the stakes on The Walking Dead have continued to escalate, and in recent issues, we’ve revealed the full extent of the world building that we’re planning to do long-term, and just how important these characters that we’ve been following are going to turn out to be in the history of civilization. That’s a pretty exciting prospect and a really cool change and shift in the narrative of that story.

What makes demonic possession such an attractive story to explore right now? That seems to be emerging as one of the hotter trends, with former Walking Dead showrunner Glen Mazzara also developing a follow-up to The Omen, where Damien is now an adult who realizes he’s the antichrist.

Horror is always the most scary when it’s the most real. And this is a very personal subject matter to a lot of people. It’s something that I think a vast majority of our population actually believes to be a real phenomenon that’s taking place and that makes these things that much scarier and that much cooler. I think that it’s definitely a realm of horror fiction that deserves to be explored and can definitely be explored in a myriad of ways and still be exciting and engaging and new. [Showtime’s] Penny Dreadful is dancing around the edges of this and something like [NBC’s] Constantine looks like it’s going to be dealing with a more action-driven angle of this. Outcast is going to go down this emotional road and show this really deep character-driven emotional journey that will make it stand apart from any other explorations of exorcism and demonic possession that are going on on TV right now. I think there’s room for all that stuff.

Is demonic possession the new zombie drama?

I remember a lot of people saying zombies are the new vampires back when The Walking Dead was starting, so if we can change the narrative to “demons are the new zombies” for Outcast‘s debut then that will be very exciting.

Read the full interview here at Hollywood Reporter!