Frank Darabont Fired From The Walking Dead

Producer and showrunner Frank Darabont has been fired from The Walking Dead after butting heads with AMC over the show's budget. The show is currently the network's highest rated and cast and crew respected Darabont and his passion for the show.

AMC has also had issues with Mad Men creator/producer Matthew Weiner and Breaking Bad creator/producer Vince Gilligan.

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...and he's the writer for most of the episodes, right?

As I understand it, no. In fact, after the first season he fired most/all of the writing staff.

Yeah but someone brought this up before on the forum and I believe the reason for the firing was that most of writing was still done by him, he did it on the sort of British miniseries model / B5 model where he was involved in most of them.

There were only six episodes; he wrote two alone, wrote two in collaboration with another writer.

I've never seen this series, I'm vaguely interested in it enough that it's at the bottom of my 20 odd series watch/rewatch list.

But the sheet arogance of those executives really annoys me. Assuming Waking the Dead truly is a great show surely they should place some faith in the person they hire to run it.

There's always a chance that they might stumble across another golden goose to take over the series, but I hope it crashes and burns. Because then there's the slightest chance that executives everywhere might realise that, apart from funding and arbitary firing decisions, they have little to no impact on the quality of a tv series. A tiny chance at least.

Reading about it, seems the execs want a cheaper show.

Oh well, nice while it lasted.

Edit: yeah, this boils my... at least they can't take the comic from us.

edited 17th Aug '11 6:43:52 AM by MildGuy

I thought it was one of the Best US tv programmes I've seen for a while but why why why do blockheaded exec's have to interfere?

Reportedly, makeup/visual effects artist Gregory Nicotero (of KNB EFX) is to become the new showrunner. I'm not so sure about this, seeing how bad KNB co-founder Robert Kurtzman's work as a director has been.

On the other hand, that they were both in the same company doesn't necessarily mean they'll act the same way.