Horror / Sci-Fi / Thriller Round-Up: The Walking Dead Companion Series, Red Mars, Hap and Leonard TV Adaptation

We're back with another round-up, this time with news on the horror, sci-fi, and thriller fronts. There's a possibility that we could see a key character from the upcoming The Walking Dead companion series pop up in the current series. Meanwhile, Babylon 5 fans should be excited by who's scribing Spike TV's upcoming Red Mars show and a new writer/producer has been added to SundanceTV's in-development Hap and Leonard series.

While we eagerly await the return of The Walking Dead Season 5 on February 8th, news about the companion series has helped sate our appetites for more onscreen depictions of Robert Kirkman's living dead landscape. With most of the core cast now in place and cameras set to roll for the second Walking Dead show, another news item regarding the companion series has come to light, and it might be the biggest one yet.

Jessica Chobot of Nerdist News revealed today that it's likely that at least one of the main characters from The Walking Dead companion series will co-star in a six-episode arc on Season 6 of The Walking Dead. The unknown character would interact with Rick Grimes and company before presumably heading toward the Los Angeles area where the companion series is set.

Readers of Kirkman's The Walking Dead comic book series probably have a pretty good idea of what location the companion series character would cross paths with Rick's group, but no official details about the crossover are known at this time.

Previously codenamed Cobalt and now referred to unofficially as Fear the Walking Dead, the companion series is expected to take place during the early days of the zombie apocalypse—a time period mostly left up to the imagination thus far in the current series due to Rick's coma in the first episode.

The Walking Dead companion series will star Kim Dickens, Cliff Curtis, Frank Dillane and Alycia Debnam Carey. Robert Kirkman co-created and co-wrote the pilot with Dave Erickson (Sons of Anarchy, Low Winter Sun), who also serves as showrunner and executive producer. The Walking Dead executive producers Kirkman, Gale Anne Hurd and David Alpert are handling the same duties on the new show. We’ll keep Daily Dead readers updated on The Walking Dead companion series as more announcements are made.

Babylon 5 fans should be pleased to know that prolific TV and comic book writer J. Michael Straczynski (the creator of the aforementioned show) is set to scribe Red Mars, Spike TV's in-development series adaptation of Kim Stanley Robinson’s award-winning book trilogy (comprised of Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars). Deadline reports that Robinson is being kept in the creative loop as a consultant.

Many fans of Joe R. Lansdale's insightful, bold, and entertaining Hap and Leonard stories are already looking towards 2016 with anticipation, as sometime that year SundanceTV will debut the six-episode first season of Hap and Leonard. Based on the books that are a brilliant blend of humor, horror, thrills, mystery, martial arts, and much more, the Hap and Leonard series will be co-written and at least partly directed by Jim Mickle (who co-wrote and directed last year's Cold and July, based on Lansdale's novel of the same name), with Nick Damici also lending his pen to the script and both serving as executive producers. Now Deadline reports that the creative duo have become a trio, as E.L. “Evan” Katz, who directed Cheap Thrills, has hopped aboard Hap and Leonard as a writer and producer.

Filming on Hap and Leonard begins this year, with Lansdale himself co-executive producing the project. Casting details have not yet been revealed, so who will play Hap Collins, Leonard Pine, and their memorable friends and enemies still remains to be seen. For those unfamiliar with the Hap and Leonard series of novels, here's the synopsis of Savage Season (1990), the first installment of the series (via Goodreads):

"Start with two best friends who practice martial arts in their free time: one a straight white guy, the other a black gay guy. Add a conniving ex-wife in a blue-jean miniskirt. Throw in half a million in a muddy creekbed somewhere near the Sabine River in East Texas. Add an ex-radical from the '60s and two naive idealists who want to save the world. Mix them all together in a half-assed plan, season with double-crosses, and then top it off with a hilarious and chilling drug dealer named Soldier. Bloody mayhem a la Lansdale."