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Thief of Thieves Pilot On The Way From AMC: Robert Kirkman's Elaborate Plan To Steal TV An Hour At A Time Continues

Alasdair Stuart writes for Bleeding Cool.

Thief of Thieves is just three issues in but is already substantially more fun than The Walking Dead. I know, I know, a story about the survivors of the end of the world struggling to survive on a planet filled with the dead and insane shouldn't exactly be a voyage to Pratfall City but there's just something about a good heist story. Give me a gentleman thief with a curious set of morals and a crew of amiably frightening sidekicks over desperate survivors any day of the week.

After all, who you would rather have a drink with; the few bits of Rick Grimes that still work, or Conrad Paulson from Thief of Thieves? Admittedly Conrad would probably stick you with the bill and steal your wallet but Rick would yell stuff and smell funny and shoot things and weep for the past and it would just be a bit embarrassing.

Conrad is the star of Robert Kirkman's new book, Thief of Thieves. He's a master thief who wants to quit to return to his family and ends up being forced to steal from other thieves. It's an immensely fun book, witty, sharp, funny and paced and structured like nothing I've seen in years. If this was a movie, I'd expect it to be directed by Stephen Soderbergh, star George Clooney and have a David Holmes soundtrack.

According to The Wrap, it's all set for a small screen pilot on AMC, the same network that's home to writer Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead. It's a smart, logical move, if nothing else because Thief of Thieves is much, much more instantly accessible as a concept than The Walking Dead.

That being said, this has the early look of a series very much from The Walking Dead family (Albeit, of course, without Uncle Frank who no one talks about anymore). The show is being produced by Chic Eglee and Robert Alpert, one former Walking Dead producer and one current one and both clearly on good working terms with Kirkman. Eglee's also an executive producer on FX's TV adaptation of Powers and I'm sure the speculation about how well that production's going will only be made worse by him being attached to such a high end project elsewhere.

Personally though, I'm genuinely intrigued not only by the idea of a Thief of Thieves show, especially one so early in the comics' run but how this particular trope is taking hold. This really is Leverage/Burn Notice territory and the well dressed aesthetic of the lead even has a look of Don Draper about it. Time will tell how well the show will do but so far, my money's on Conrad Paulson. Probably because he stole my wallet of course, but hey.

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