Why frank darabont leaves the walking dead

Known for his cinematic ventures, Darabont openly championed The Walking Dead 's epic scale and it's not hard to imagine his reaction at being told to rein things in. The initial report via THR even suggested that AMC were looking to film more interior scenes and cut back on the amount of zombies shown on screen. While unconfirmed, this would make sense given that The Walking Dead season 2 spent a great deal of time on the Greene farm. Fan response to Darabont's firing was largely one of confusion.

The showrunner had been involved with The Walking Dead since day one and had contributed in almost every conceivable aspect in terms of development, production, direction and writing. For all intents and purposes, The Walking Dead was Darabont's project and, needless to say, a lawsuit against AMC was filed in response to his dismissal. Interestingly, the lawsuit also claims that Darabont's contract had him locked-in as an executive producer for as long as The Walking Dead ran and also afforded him the opportunity to be involved in any spinoffs.

The legal complaint first arose in and is yet to be resolved, rumbling on over the past 6 years. This motion claimed to have uncovered more shady financial practices by AMC that were designed to deprive producers and showrunners of their share of The Walking Dead 's profits and came in the wake of similar legal action against AMC by Robert Kirkman , Gale Anne Hurd, Glen Mazzara Darabont's successor and more.

Seeking to gain an edge, to put it politely, back in , AMC crapped all over Darabont with a salacious document dump that hauled some very dirty digital laundry out in public. Or I will start killing people and throwing bodies out the door. Not a good look, everyone can agree. Especially, if you are trying to convince a jury that you are the good guy and AMC are the baddies, if you know wha I mean? Additionally, among a series of orders in motion that hit the NY Supreme Court docket today, some other incendiary-ish evidence was booted from the splenetic seven-year old legal battle.

Rulings as to specific testimony will be made at trial, balancing relevance and undue prejudice. The circumstances behind exactly why Frank Darabont -- who developed Robert Kirkman' s comic series The Walking Dead for TV -- was ousted during Season 2 have been the subject of gossip and speculation since it happened in But court documents from the former showrunner's lawsuit against AMC show that a big part of why he was dismissed is that he was really, really mean.

The Hollywood Reporter has an in-depth report on the court documents, which include emails from Darabont like this gem sent to executive producer Gale Anne Hurd in June "F you all for giving me chest pains because of the staggering fing incompetence, blindness to the important beats, and the beyond-arrogant lack of regard for what is written being exhibited on set every day.

I deserve better than a heart attack because people are too stupid to read a script and understand the words. Does anybody disagree with me? I for one sure would have loved to see Darabont's vision of The Walking Dead. As the show got bigger and made more money, AMC could have even increased that budgetinvesting in their biggest hit rather than just siphoning off all the profits. In any case, this is all background for the recent revelation that Jeffrey DeMunn, who played Dale Horvath in Season 1 and 2, asked to be killed off when he learned of Frank Darabont's ouster from the show that Darabont created based, of course, on the comics by Robert Kirkman.

DeMunn had worked with Darabont several times previously, and when he heard that he was making a zombie show and Darabont wanted him to join he jumped at the opportunity.

It was Frank. I knew it was going to be quality. When DeMunn learned that Darabont had been pushed out, he decided to quit in solidarity. I spent a week not being able to take a full breath. And then I realized, 'Oh, I can quit. Kill me. I don't want to do this anymore. So AMC killed off Dale long before the character was set to die in the comics. It's great to hear something from the cast on Darabont's firing, even if it is a cast member who died off years ago.

In a show where you can be killed off at any time and for any reason, it's unlikely to hear a living cast member speak up about this sort of thing. DeMunn is right, too.