Frank Darabont Leaves THE WALKING DEAD Series Two!
Showrunner quits just days after promoting the show at Comic Con and whilst shooting on the second series is just one month in! We've got a bad feeling about this...
Many of you became hooked on AMCs rather zombierific The Walking Dead last season and at WhatCulture! we are addicted by the show more than most. Our very own Simon Gallagher has been reminding how awesome it was with his episode by episode retrospective recaps and just last week we heard the second series would premiere two weeks earlier than expected on October 16th, rather than the Halloween weekend when the show debuted last year. Things were certainly shaping up well for the new, bigger sized season but shocking and disturbing news comes through the wire today as Deadline are reporting that the genius and mastermind of the show Frank Darabont has decided to step down as show runner and although it's not explicitly stated, he will probably end his writing/directing/consulting duties too. Talks are desperately on-going at AMC to keep him involved in some way with the show but I think his time looks to be done. Now we've been following the production trouble of The Walking Dead's highly anticipated second series quite closely here since last fall, the most worrying sign was whenDarabont fired the entire writing staff, and made it known he was going to hire freelance writers to script the 13 episodes of season 2 along with himself and comics creator Robert Kirkman. We reported last year this was because he pretty much wrote or re-wrote the entirety of the first seasons scripts anyway but it turns out AMC didn't go the freelance route in the end and just made up the scripts from within. But along with the constant battles over money and censorship with the network and the daily grind of producing, writing, directing & making the major decisions on the show, he is probably exhausted and done with it now. Plus he's a film director by choice and is probably getting the itch for the big screen again, his last movie being The Mist in 2007 with Deadline saying Darabont hails from the feature world and never quite adjusted to the daily grind of producing a TV series. Then came the revelation back at the end of May that AMC was looking to trim the budget on their hit series, which naturally troubled Darabont. Just the same, he was at Comic Con just the other day promoting season 2 of the series and they even debuted a cracking trailer; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OZ0mu8Ey6A So things look like theryre going well, right? Mmmm, maybe not. Darabont's replacement is likely to be The Shield's Glen Mazzara who previously showran the notoriously awful Crash series at Starz, and was hired as Darabont's second-in-command for the second series and as it's probably chaos right now at The Walking Dead offices - he will probably get the promotion rather than hiring from the outside. The great horror/drama series focuses on survivors in a post apocalyptic, zombie-infested world. Based on The Walking Dead graphic novel, created by Robert Kirkman, the story centers around lawman Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), his wife Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies), his best friend and in his absence, wife's lover Shane (Jon Bernthal) and a ragtap group of survivors - the cable networks original series broke records when it premiered last Halloween garnering 5.3 million viewers from the 90 minute pilot. This helped cement AMCs reputation for quality programming alongside other standouts like Breaking Bad and Mad Men. Darabont sounded enthusiastic about the new season and new writers last week saying The first six episodes, nobody knew what the hell they were dealing with, except me, and revealed how 6 years ago he unsuccessfully proposed the series to NBC. While season 2 begins October 16th after nearly a yearlong wait, it is troubling when there are all these changes made. And its also quite peculiar that the shows creator was at Comic Con just recently hyping his show and talking about his hopes for its second season, and then drops out early in it's production. But hey, at least a lot of his work will go into the second series and then there'll be a long break before a proposed third season so plenty of time to take a stab back and make the right decision in hiring new faces. In the mean time we look forward to Darabont's new venture. (Article co-written by Matt Holmes)