Frank Darabont was fired from the series, The Walking Dead.

This is the problem with a lot of the executives at television studios. Not all, but a sizable proportion of them. Because they green light a project (put up the money for the pilot episode or Season One of a series), they feel as if they’re the creators of the show, more so if the series is a big success. They want all the credit for its success. Forget the material the show is based on, if not an original idea. Forget the writer who toiled over a great teleplay (s) for months on end, writing and rewriting until he or she felt the script was finally right and ready to go. Forget the director of the pilot show or series and his many contributions to it. Forget the cast & crew who worked every bit as hard to create the best possible show for their viewing audience. The executives feel as if it was all their doing, and no one else had a hand in the project.

Such is the case with AMC and The Walking Dead, not to mention two of their other great shows, Mad Men and Breaking Bad. I just discovered that Developer/Writer/Executive Producer/Director Frank Darabont was fired from the series. You can Google this and find most of the story in The Hollywood Reporter. Frank appeared at the Comic-Con convention on July 22 to promote the second season of the show. Three days later he was fired from the series by Joel Stillerman, who is head of original programming at AMC.

This is what I was able to find out from The Hollywood Reporter and several other websites discussing the incident. Before Season One even aired, AMC had decided there would be a second season for The Walking Dead, but that there would be 13 episodes, instead of six. Sounded great, didn't it? I certainly thought so when I heard that 13 episodes would be done this year. What I didn't know was about the catch to this. It seemed that the entire budget for Season One and its six episodes was drastically cut for Season Two, but with twice the amount of work to be done by cast and crew. Talk about wanting to stretch a dollar.

AMC wanted to get 13 episodes for less than the cost of the six episodes that were done for Season One. Of course, Season One of The Walking Dead became a ground-breaking success for AMC and was nominated for several Emmy awards. The ratings and awards, however, weren’t important to the executives. At least that's what Joel Stillerman stated. If you believe that, I have some ocean-front property in Nevada to sell you. Joel probably does, too. Anyway, they wanted more work and sweat from the writers, cast and crew for less money. That's definitely a common occurence at most corporations these day, except when it concerns the executives. I know that from personal experience. The executives get richer, while the hourly employees can barely keep their heads above water with their wages.

The executives at AMC wanted fewer zombies in the series to cut back on the cost of hiring extras and makeup people. They felt it would be cheaper if the zombies were heard but not seen. Duh! Because it takes eight days to shoot an episode, the executives also wanted four of those days to be shot inside a studio, which is cheaper than shooting exterior shots. I mean, gosh guys, you're supposed to see zombies walking around outside. That's part of the show. And, the series was given a 30% tax credit for filming in Georgia. The executives decided to keep that credit for themselves, rather than applying it to the budget for the series. That's more money in the executive's pocket. I mean if I was a studio excecutive, I would probably want to line my pockets with as much money as possible before the golden egg disappeared. Of course, this does make me wonder if the executives for AMC ever worked for Exxon or maybe Wall Street.

It’s well known to many of the insiders that Frank Darabont fought a constant battle with the executives of AMC in a futile attempt to keep The Walking Dead big in scope and style. This was certainly one reason the show drew so many viewers the first season. I remember praising AMC when I did a review of The Walking Dead for having the courage to put a show of this caliber on the air. In my opinion the entire first season was great, and I thought AMC deserved to share in the praise. Boy, was I wrong on that account. Here’s another thing that’s known. Frank Darabont was in the middle of fixing one of Season Two’s episodes, which had been filmed by another director, when he was fired. He had no knowledge or forewarning about this. The executives, in my opinion, shot him in the back, which most executives are pretty good at doing. They kind of like to sneak up on you when you’re not looking and then put the bullet in the back of your head. Hell, maybe the executives at AMC are ex-Mafia hit men. I don't know.

My feeling here is that the executives decided to kill two birds with one stone when they fired Frank Darabont. They would save even more money by having him off the show now that it was a huge success, plus they could put another director in his place who would work for less money and not argue with them over cuts and setbacks in their less-than-stellar support of the series.

Okay, now I get to really rant.

In case you don’t remember, Frank Darabont directed Stephen King’s The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and The Mist, the first two of which were nominated for Academy Awards in various fields. This is a man who knows horror inside and out, and he clearly knows how to direct it with a strong passion for making the film seem as real as possible and for getting the audience involved with its characters and storyline. Frank Darabont is a perfectionist who wants to make his film or series as perfect as possible for the viewers. He wants to give them the best of his ability. Frank took a lower salary to film The Mist, and I know he took a much lower salary to get The Walking Dead off the ground. Now, depending on what his contract states, the executives of AMC won’t have to worry about rewarding him for the show’s great success.

This reminds somewhat of 20th Century Fox and James Cameron’s success with Titanic. Cameron offered to forego his salary and share of the profits if Fox wouldn’t shut down the production of the movie. They gladly accepted his proposal. Then when the movie grossed nearly 2 billion dollars, they tried to figure out a way to keep from giving Cameron back his money, but 2 billion dollars is a lot of money for a studio to hide in the accounting books. Luckily, they made the right decision in giving him back his salary and share of the profits that he would’ve made on the film. I doubt if AMC will do this for Darabont, unless he has it written in his contract. I hope he does because I would love to see the shit-eating grin on his face when they have to pay him. Still, he lost his baby.

Another thing here is that both Stephen King and his son, Joe Hill, were going to write an episode for Season Three of The Walking Dead as a favor to Frank Darabont. And, who knows, maybe even be a couple of zombies in one of the episodes. I hope they now decide not to do it. Neither man needs the money or exposure.

Now, I’m not a big fan of zombies, though there have been a few zombie movies I've really enjoyed. The only reason I watched Season One of The Walking Dead was because of Frank Darabont’s involvement with the series. I even entered the contest to win a role as a walking zombie on the show in Season Two. I mean my legs are so bad right that I actually walk like a zombie. Now that Frank is no longer involved with the series, I seriously doubt if I’ll watch Season Two when it airs on October 16th. I apologize to the wonderful cast in the show. I know they have to make a living and will therefore continue to act in the series as long as it goes on. Still, it gets tiring when the big shots walk all over the people under them, and I don’t have to approve of AMC’s actions by watching the rest of the series. If I do, it only proves that they were right in what they did.

Screw them!

One really good thing that might have come out of this is that Frank Darabont is now free to pursue the position of director for the theatrical version of Stephen King’s The Stand. It’s been announced that Warner Brothers wants to turn The Stand into a major motion picture like Lord of the Rings. If any man has the skill and passion to make Stephen King’s The Stand into a successful film, it’s Frank Darabont. To do the film right for the big screen, it would probably have to be done in two movies with each one running around two-and-a-half hours to maybe three hours in length. One film could come out at the beginning of the summer and the second part could come out in time for Christmas. I think this could be the project that would finally earn Frank his Academy Award for Best Director and Best Picture. I’m hoping this is what will happen and that I live long enough to see it. As Tim Robbin’s character said in The Shawshank Redemption: “Hope is a good thing, perhaps the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”