Exclusive interview with Tim Seeley, creator of the Wausau-based Revival TV show

The D.C. Everest grad talks about why it was shot in Canada, what it was like to work on the show, how it's impacted the comic book, and more.

Correction: Fixed a typo in Tim Seeley’s name in the headline. That typo did not appear in the rest of the text.

The TV show Revival debuted last week on debuted on the SyFy Network. The show is based on a comic book series of the same name written by D.C. Everest graduate Tim Seeley. The show is set in Wausau, and though most of the production took place in a New Brunswick town, there are exterior shots from Wausau proper, meaning a nationwide audience would get exposed to the area to some degree.

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The show currently has a 7.7 rating on IMDB with early episodes getting 8+ ratings, indicating fans overall seem to like it so far. The show is essentially a zombie mystery set in Wausau, except the zombies aren’t evil; just confused. (In one early scene, an old woman dug up her husband distraught that he too hasn’t come to life.)

To celebrate, The Wausonian chatted with Seeley on Monday to get his thoughts about the series debut, what went into producing it, and how it’s being received.

• Why wasn’t the film shot in Wausau?: Seeley says it’s too expensive to shoot in states that don’t have tax incentives for film/TV production. Many states have incentives for film crews that help off-set the costs of production - typically post-production because a crew shoots in a state, gets a tax rebate and uses it to fund the post-production process. But he said the reason there are still Wausau exterior shots (you can see the Dudley Tower and the clock at the corner of Third and Jefferson in the first episode) is because he wanted to make it as authentic as possible.

• How did he react seeing his comic come to life for the first time? “Really weird,” Seeley told me. “It was really weird to see it.” Seeley said he was very involved in the process, even getting the dailies to review, and it was the first time he had one of his comic books turned into a TV show. “It’s hard to see it as a miracle or something because I know how much work went into it for eight years.”

• The pandemic is a reason it’s a TV show: After the 2017 trailer was produced, Seeley and the producers did work on the movie version of Revival, and even had a working script until the pandemic struck. They had rules on how many actors could be on a set at a given time which really didn’t work for Revival. So instead they produced Revealer, a 2022 movie about a stripper and a religious protestor trapped together in a peep show booth — they must work together to survive an apocalypse in 1980s Chicago. Everyone liked working on the film together so they decided to turn Revival into a TV show and used contacts to make it happen.