'The Walking Dead' producer Scott Gimple also talks about the possibility of incorporating Negan's backstory into the TV series.
- Dec 1, 2016
AceShowbiz - Image Comics has published their monthly preview magazine, Image+. It includes Part 8 of "Here's Negan", which details "The Walking Dead" villain's backstory. As revealed in the previous seven parts, Negan was married and worked as a high school coach before the zombie apocalypse.
Negan, who had an affair, chose his wife over his mistress when he found out that his wife had cancer. His wife died when zombies began storming the hospital. His wife's name is Lucille. Negan first killed walkers to save a boy in the hospital hallways. Negan and the young boy then tried to make their way to the young boy's house and got to know each other along the way, until a zombie snuck up on the boy and tackled him.
In part 8, Negan confronts a group of men on the road who demand he hand over his gas can. But he refuses and insults the men, which somehow turns into the forming of a group. One man is bringing a baseball bat (pre-barbed wire). Negan and the group then sit around a camp fire after what is described as a day of mowing down zombies with guns. Negan is holding a baseball bat closely to himself at this point but compliments guns and the way they make him feel. Then a massive amount of zombies approaches the camp.
The acquiring of the baseball bat appears to be sending Negan back a couple of steps morally. Not only because he is ecstatic about using guns to kill but he's also suppressing his grief over the death of his wife.
In an interview with Yahoo! TV, showrunner Scott Gimple talked about exploring Negan's backstory on the TV series. "I do believe yes, it's in the future. You know, I'm always careful about this, because things can absolutely change," Gimple said. "There's a loose plan in place I have," he added.
Gimple then said that the "Here's Negan" story is where they would pull much of his history from. "I take that 'Here's Negan' story as the backstory. There's some aspects of it that will probably be cool (on the show). It's some fairly far-flung stuff...in the future, you will see some stuff from that," he explained.
To The Hollywood Reporter, executive producer Robert Kirkman said, "It's not something we've really thought about," when he got asked about the possibility of "Here's Negan" being adapted on the AMC series.
"That story works best when Negan lasts as long in the show as he does in the comic. You never know. But if we do get to that point, it'd be nice to see that story adapted. I love Jeffrey Dean Morgan with a burning fury of a thousand suns and I would love to see him tell that story and see the character go through those places. It's a great way to get more context into who this guy is. It'd be neat but there are no plans as of yet," he explained.
For Morgan, who has been a diehard fan of both the "The Walking Dead" comics and the show before he was cast as Negan, the opportunity to dig deeper into who the guy is something he is pushing hard to play.
"It's fascinating stuff and I'd love to do an episode following what Kirkman has written seeing Negan become Negan," Morgan said, noting that Kirkman sent him "Here's Negan" early. "I'm fascinated to see the stuff with Negan's wife and all that but when he stepped out after the apocalypse, you see him trying to help people and protect them and save them. And when you're consistently not listening to him and dying, that gave birth to the Negan we see now who has a pretty strict set of rules and if you don't follow them, you get the iron and die. He was sick of seeing people die on his watch and I think that's a very interesting storyline. Who knows if there's that good guy in there somewhere?"
"I can't imagine us not sticking that in an episode with his backstory and I've mentioned a few times who the bat is named after. But I'd love to see that backstory in an episode, that would be awesome," he added.
"The Walking Dead" airs Sundays at 9 P.M. ET on AMC.
