AMC has greenlite "The Walking Dead," based on Robert Kirkman's popular comic about survivors of a zombie apocalypse.

Frank Darabont ("The Mist," "The Green Mile") is writing and directing the series, with Gale Anne Hurd of Valhalla Motion Pictures and David Alpert of Circle of Confusion executive producing along with Darabont and Kirkman.

"The Walking Dead" follows a police office who leads his family and a group of survivors across the country in search of a safe home.

"Working with people like Frank Darabont and Gale Anne Hurd is the right way in for us to deliver a project of distinction in this genre," Charlie Collier said, president of AMC.

"When I heard that Darabont was interested in doing it a long, long time ago, I was just ecstatic," Kirkman said in a 2009 interview with MTV. "For me, 'The Walking Dead' is not necessarily a horror thing. It's not all about the shocks. It's about characters and all of that dramatic nonsense. And Darabont does that better than anybody."

Image Comics has published 11 volumes of "The Walking Dead" since 2003.