The Writer’s Room on the Sundance Channel featured The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman among other guests recently -you can see the entire episode here. Kirkman talked about the process of taking the zombie story from comics to TV. One of the networks they shopped the concept to was NBC.
[The Walking Dead] actually did almost get made at NBC. It didn’t get made because when the pilot was turned in, the famous story is one of the executives said, ‘This is awesome. I really love this. Does it have to have zombies in it?
As you might guess, both Frank Darabont and Robert Kirkman felt the zombie story really needed to keep the zombies. Their final decision to work with AMC instead rested on some important points they worked out that you can read about at Warming Glow.