AMC Launches Digital Studio, ‘Walking Dead’ Web Series

Two weeks after Comcast received the a-okay from the US government to acquire NBC, the cable operator and internet and telephone service provider shutdown the broadcast network’s digital studio. If you thought that action signified a greater movement within the three-letter-network television community to shuffle off its original new media initiatives, AMC has some news that will make you rethink your outlook on the role of traditional TV networks in the online video industry.

The home of Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, and The Killing (we won’t mention Rubicon) today announced the launch of AMC Digital Studios, “an online destination to incubate and to develop web series from up-and-coming talent to be showcased at AMCTV.com.”

The first such original web series to launch under the umbrella of the internet’s newest new media studio comes from writer and director Peter Glanz. (I’m emphasizing launch because, as savvy Tubefilter readers already know, AMC wrapped the series’ production back in March, well before the announcement of this new digital studio.) The Trivial Pursuits of Arthur Banks stars Adam Goldberg as a successful theater director who pays several visits to his therapist – played by Bluth family patriarch Jeffrey Tambor – and stages an intricate play that resembles his own life. The show will premiere simultaneously on AMCTV.com and Hulu on August 22.

The news comes a day after Bloody Disgusting made it known AMC is set to release an original mini-web-series for the upcoming second season of the network’s zombie thriller The Walking Dead. John Greg Nicotero is on board to direct and John Esposito will scribe the six episode arc, which follows “Hannah and her children, who take shelter in her ex-husband’s house from a horde of zombies.” The companion series is set to air online this Fall.