AMC’s long-running television series, The Walking Dead, was an adaptation of a comic book created by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore, which showed how the classic elements of a zombie story could be brought to life in a long-form television show. On June 12, the cast and crew of Syfy’s new series, Revival, are looking to blaze a new and decidedly different path for the zombie television show with their adaptation of the Image Comics series of the same name by creators Tim Seeley and Mike Norton.
In part one of our primer on Revival, original creator Tim Seeley provided details on the comic series, which revolves around two sisters who live in a town where all of the recently deceased suddenly rise from their graves with a craving for the lives they had and to understand their new place in the world. In this second part of our Revival primer, we chat with co-show runners Luke Boyce (Revealer) and Aaron B. Koontz (Scare Package II, The Pale Door) about their upcoming adaptation for Syfy.
During the Pandemic, Tim Seeley collaborated with his friend and fellow comic writer Michael Moreci (Barbaric) to write a film called Revealer, which would later be picked up by Shudder. The director of that film was Luke Boyce, who met Seeley and Moreci back in 2016 at Chicago’s C2E2 Convention.
“I noticed that Tim and Mike were there, so I gathered up the courage to talk to Tim and introduce myself as a local filmmaker in Chicago. I wanted to know if he’d ever want to collaborate on something in the indie film space. That led to us getting drinks a couple weeks later and talking. Then we just kept meeting up for drinks week after week and getting to know each other. I was asking him about doing something and that’s when Tim, himself, actually brought up the idea of adapting Revival,” Boyce recounted.
“He had no idea how much that comic meant to me, so I played coy and was like, ‘Oh, ya? Interesting, tell me more!’ He ended up explaining that he had numerous bad experiences with the film industry and trying to get his work adapted. He was actually very interested in trying to do something on a smaller scale, and he liked how my production company went about making stuff in the indie space.”
Boyce found Revival back in 2014 when he was devouring a steady diet of Image Comics. The book resonated with him for both professional and personal reasons.
“Revival specifically stood out to me because, at the time, my production company was really looking at developing IP and I remember thinking how much Revival was very much my style. The small town noir mixed with horror and supernatural elements, but at the core was this family drama. It was exactly what I wanted to do as a director back then,” Boyce explained. “It really spoke to me, especially as I had been having these recurring dreams of my late father coming back to life, and instead of feeling happy about it in the dream, I would always feel uncomfortable and even upset. Like I knew he wasn’t supposed to be there even though I missed him so badly.
“The idea of trying to make sense of our deeper understanding of mortality and how we would deal with something like that was just a very personal topic to me and the comic just really stood out,” Boyce continued. “I remember at the time mentioning to my producing partner the idea of reaching out to these creators because I knew that with Image, they were creator-owned and had more say in how they got adapted.”
Boyce and Seeley spent several years trying to make Revival as an independent film. They mentioned the adaptation to Aaron B. Koontz after they collaborated on Revealer, which Koontz had produced.
“I remember sending him a copy of the comic while he was in Ontario producing a film called Sorry About the Demon. He immediately connected to the material and started pitching me on the idea of actually adapting the comic together as a TV series,” Boyce recounted.
Koontz was aware of Seeley’s work on Hack/Slash and had heard of Revival. He remembered seeing advertisements for it in issues of The Walking Dead and dismissing it as just another zombie story.
“I read the first issue and was like, ‘Holy shit! What an asshole I am for not having known about this the whole time!’ It’s so amazing and such a cool story. I was hooked, and I couldn’t put it down. I just kept reading,” Koontz shared. “I will tell you there are no Amish ninjas in season one [one does appear in later issues of the comic]. But I loved that. I loved Tim’s sensibility and the quirkiness. It goes in a lot of directions.”
Once Koontz came aboard, a deal was finally reached to adapt Revival as a television show, with both he and Boyce serving as co-showrunners. The duo agreed that for any adaptation of Revival to succeed, it had to retain three elements of the comic series.
“First and most important, the heart of the story has to be Dana and her sister Em [Cypress]. The sister dynamic is the emotional core. During the years I spent trying to get Revival made, I would go with Tim to conventions and meet fans. Especially after the comic wrapped, I remember people saying they wished the story had stayed with the sisters more. You could tell how deeply readers connected with those two, and I knew that no matter what, the show had to keep Dana and Em at the center,” Boyce shared.
“Second is the setting. Wausau is more than just a location. It has a very distinct energy. It feels lived in and specific. In the show, we wanted to preserve that feeling and treat the town like a character in its own right.
“The third is tone. That might actually be the biggest strength of the comic. It blends horror, mystery, dark comedy, family drama, and a kind of small town noir.” Boyce continued. “It walks this really interesting line where it can be grounded and heartfelt one minute and then completely surreal or terrifying the next. Staying true to that mix while also finding our own voice was one of the most challenging and rewarding parts of the adaptation.”
Adapting a work to another medium always requires some degree of change. One of the biggest changes Boyce and Koontz made to Revival was the choice to make the murder investigation that drives part of the comic a more central part of the television show.
“It’s about a murder investigation, first and foremost. We’ll treat it like Mare of Easttown, which is a show that I was obsessed with, but we’ll allow it to have all the quirkiness and amazing things from the 47 issues of the comic,” Koontz clarified. “The focus on the murder is our ‘A' question. Then our ‘B' question is what caused ‘Revival Day?’ We don’t fully answer that in season one. So, we can still build some more if we get a season two and beyond.”
The second change that Boyce and Koontz made was to redefine Em Cypress’ character arc. The duo gave her a new backstory to help pin down what she wanted and needed.
“In our version, Em was born with a condition called Osteogenesis Imperfecta, which causes her bones to break easily. She spent her childhood being protected and kept from the world. Just as she is finally gaining her independence, there is a car accident. Em is driving. Their mother dies,” Boyce stated. “Em survives but has to go through a long recovery, both physically and emotionally. Just when she starts to put the pieces back together, Revival Day happens. So now Em is not just trying to understand what happened to her, she is also carrying deep guilt and secrets that she would rather keep buried.
“It adds weight to her dynamic with Dana and with their father, who has always overprotected her,” Boyce continued. “That helped us build a version of the story where each member of the family is wrestling with their own silence. We often say that all of the Cypresses ‘substitute protection for affection.’ They all feel so much, but they are terrible at actually saying it. That emotional tension became the anchor for everything else.”
The television version of Revival also introduces some supporting characters earlier than when they appear in the comics and tweaks their stories. One notable player who has been altered is the Limp Bizkit listening, snowmobile repairman-turned-exorcist Blaine Abel, played by Steven Ogg (Dark Match).
“He was such a great character in the comic, but I got really interested in the religious connotation of what people were going to take from this and then building out a cult following. I wanted to play with that,” Koontz said. “Blaine became this really interesting antagonist for us to play with. He goes in some very wild directions, but he’s still a repairman and also does exorcisms. He’s still kind of Blaine, but he’s very different otherwise.”
Changing characters like Blaine and some other elements that Koontz and Boyce couldn’t talk about yet allowed the creators of Revival a chance to surprise and play with the expectations of comic readers. “We deliberately set things up for fans of the comic to think that we’re going to go in a particular direction with a character the same as it happens in the comics, and then it happens a totally different way,” Koontz said.
Another important element of adapting a comic to television is finding the right cast to bring your characters to life. Boyce and Koontz believe their show features the perfect ensemble cast to portray the citizens of Wausau, Wisconsin, especially the Cypress family.
They chose Melanie Scrofano (Wynonna Earp) to play Dana Cypress because of her flair for both hilarious and heartbreaking scenes. “Tim Seeley has this incredible knack for creating these whip-smart, sardonic, strong-but-wounded women, and Melanie completely just brought that to life in ways we weren’t expecting. She’s absolutely hilarious in person, and she brings that same razor-sharp wit to Dana. But what’s truly wild is her ability to pivot,” Boyce explained.
“One second, she’s delivering a line that has the crew in stitches and the next, she’s absolutely gutting you emotionally. That emotional range, that constant oscillation between comedy and heartbreak—it’s breathtaking to watch. She brought Dana to life in a way that felt both familiar and brand new.”
Romy Weltman (Terror Train [2022]) was cast as Martha/Em Cypress because of her ability to invest her seemingly fragile character with a quiet power running just below the surface. “What’s remarkable is how much strength and even danger she conveys without ever raising her voice. She brought this hidden darkness to the role that made you feel like Em was always holding something back, something immense,” Boyce said. “Over the course of the season, this character goes through so much, and Romy handled every beat with resilience, clarity, and this emotional depth that felt bottomless. She’s an ocean, beautiful, still, and then suddenly overwhelming.”
“The journey of the Revival comic is Em’s arc. And season one really is Em’s arc as well,” Koontz added. “Dana is the driving force, but I think Romy is a star, and I’m so excited for the world to get to see her very soon because she’s going to really surprise people. Especially with the Breaking Bad style journey I want her to have, if you will.”
Koontz and Boyce tapped David James Elliott for the Cypress patriarch, Wayne. Elliott is perhaps best known for playing the lead character on CBS’ JAG, which aired in the ‘90s. “One of our sales agents suggested David James Elliott for the role of Wayne, and I was like, ‘The dude from JAG?’ Then I watched him in the show Heels and he was such an imposing guy. He had such a presence, but he had such a warmth to him,” Koontz said. “He understands TV and he’s also captivating. If we’re fortunate enough to have multiple seasons, we have a real arc of where we want to go with Wayne.”
“David understood Wayne’s contradictions. The way he mistakes control for love, the way grief has hardened him and instead of softening those edges, he leaned into them with honesty and intensity. It made Wayne feel heartbreakingly real,” Boyce added. “There’s something powerful about seeing a character so misguided still believe he’s doing the right thing, and David made us believe it too. His performance gave Wayne dimension we couldn’t have written on the page.”
When Revival debuts on SyFy on Thursday, June 12, the Cypress family and the residents of their town will become embroiled in several dangerous mysteries that imperil the living and the living dead. Boyce and Koontz hope that the serialized elements and several mind-blowing twists will keep viewers engaged and wanting more episodes and seasons of the show.
“There are elements of procedural storytelling in the sense that each episode uncovers a different piece of the puzzle of the central murder mystery, and you’ll meet new characters whose lives have been changed by the Revival Event. But everything is feeding into a much larger narrative. The questions we ask early on about death, identity, morality, and justice are questions we’ll be exploring all season long. So while you’ll get satisfying reveals in every episode, the real payoff is in how it all connects,” Boyce revealed.
“The show starts as one thing and becomes something much stranger, more emotional, and more expansive than you’re expecting. Even fans of the comic are in for some major surprises. And without spoiling anything, by Episode 6, all bets are off. We can’t wait for people to experience where it goes!”
Revival premieres on SYFY Thursday, June 12 at 10:00 p.m. ET, with new episodes dropping weekly. All episodes will also be available to stream exclusively on Peacock a week after they air.
