7 Things To Know About The CW's Lively New Series 'iZombie'
Just about anyone would feel at least a bit unnerved when their life is upended by a traumatic event. At the most basic level, that's what 'iZombie' is about.
Well, that's what it's about if the "traumatic event" was actually a boat party gone awry, that turned our former med student heroine into a brains-starved zombie who develops a psychic ability and helps the local police solve crimes after she begins working (and secretly snacking) at a morgue.
We'll let you catch your breath. That was a lot to absorb right there.
But as crazy as that premise sounds, it somehow works, and it will be on the CW (at 9pm) for the first time tonight.
To get you ready for the series premiere, get to know a few facts about the show.
1. "iZombie" is loosely based on a DC Comics series of the same name. However, in the comics, the main character Gwen Dylan is friends with Ellie, who is a ghost, and Scott, who is a were-terrier. In the show, the main character, whose name is Olivia "Liv" Moore finds a confidante in her morgue boss and compatriot, Dr. Ravi Chakrabarti.
2. "iZombie" was created by the same team behind "Veronica Mars". As the show's creator, Rob Thomas, told io9:
Veronica Mars, we were really serious about trying to write great mysteries and spending a lot of our beats and story points on that. I think on iZombie, we're going to spend a little more time trying to get to fun zombie moments. We don't want it just to be a "zombie solves a murder case," each week. We want there to be a real, zombie mythology and zombie story lines. I would say in Veronica Mars there was always a big murder case that encompassed the season. In iZombie, there's a big zombie storyline that will sort of serve as the same role.
3. Rose McIver, who plays lead character Liv Moore, hails from New Zealand, and once played the Yellow Ranger in "Power Rangers RPM". Basically, she can kick butt.
4. Creator Rob Thomas wanted to pitch "iZombie" seven years ago, but "The Walking Dead" beat him to the punch. "A week before I was going to take it out, Frank Darabont sold The Walking Dead to AMC," he said to The Hollywood Reporter. "It killed my pitch. No one wanted to be the second zombie show."
5. Malcolm Goodwin, playing detective Clive Babineaux, knows how to have a good time. The actor once appeared in LMFAO's music video for "Party Rock".
6. The show also shares some similarities with the book/film Warm Bodies. In the story, a very likeable (and human-friendly) zombie named R is able to absorb memories by eating brains."If Warm Bodies hadn't been done, if people didn't realize that it was possible for people to like a zombie, then we would be much more nervous about it," Thomas says. "You see her eating brains in just about every episode and if that turns people off, we're in deep trouble."
7. Despite its roots in the comic book series, the show will be its own story. Unlike the comics, "iZombie" will have no other paranormal characters. The show will focus primarily on Liv's zombie-ness, and every week we'll see her solving crimes. As Thomas told IGN:
I would say the beginning episodes gave more attention to those mysteries of the week and over the course of the season, that shifted over into the mythology and we started finding cases that were part of the mythology. I think that's going to be what the show succeeds or fails on. The murder cases make a nice -- not a nice, that's a funny way of putting it! [Laughs] I think, hopefully, we'll have fans of the show and I have a feeling they're going to gravitate to the zombie stuff.