Why You Should Be Furious: The Truth Behind The Walking Dead Frank Darabont Situation

For those that don’t like to read I’ll let you in on a little secret: It was all about the money and Frank not wanting to slash production value of the highest watched Television drama so AMC could make a few extra bucks.

So we all enjoyed the first season of The Walking Dead. Yes we all know that it had it’s flaws and dragged a bit at parts but Season 2 was promising to shape up and flex it’s muscle to get rid of those small issues. Then we got the news – Frank Darabont was no longer attached as the series showrunner. What happened? It was pretty much glossed over and things kept moving forward with some awesome stills from Season 2 coming out and a new showrunner in place it almost seemed planned.

Now though an editorial by the Hollywood Reporter has given us a lot of information on what REALLY happened and why we should not only be worried about the future of the show but downright angry with AMC. AMC apparently let each of the cast know, with NO explanation short of “This isn’t working”, that Darabont was fired just days after the Comic Con panel.

Darabont is not a director known for not having an ego but he has been very quiet about the whole situation. Telling the press that he doesn’t want to talk about it and the cast themselves have given no comments (and supposidly have been told flat out not to.)

The series was originally set for a slash of 3.4 million down to 2.75 million in its budget per episode. One might think that’s a huge price slash but factor in the fact that their 2 previous hit shows (Mad Men and Breaking Bad) only reached 2.3 million to 4.3 million viewers respectively. The Walking Dead started off Season 1 with 5.3 MILLION viewers and ended up with 6 million on the final episode. It’s THE BIGGEST NUMBER EVER for ANY drama on basic cable. (Yes that price cut seems like a GREAT idea.) While the show’s staff felt that with the success the cut would be negotiable it looks like AMC instead felt there would still be a cut, not only in the budget but of time to film episodes in 8 days down to 4.

When did the firing happen? Well it looks like early episode footage came in that was unusable and while Darabont was editing the episode in order to fix it, got chopped. Yes all he wanted to do was keep the same kind of production value as Season 1 when they went into Season 2 and was vocal about it. Possibly too vocal possibly just right considering his formula WORKS.

We’re really not sure how Season 2 is going to shape up at this time but I’ll tell you one thing, if it’s a flop the blame full rest FLULY on the shoulders of AMC’s Joel Stillerman for firing Darabont.