Frank Darabont breaks his silence on the ‘malevolent’ forces that helped tear him away from what he built on The Walking Dead….
Breakups are rarely easy and more often times than not they leave a body count between the two parties. AMC executives who over see The Walking Dead know all about this process because since the first day the show went into production they’ve jettisoned two separate show runners while revamping the series in the process.
The original show runner that was ousted also just happened to be the man who championed getting The Walking Dead on TV in the first place.
Frank Darabont, widely known for his direction in the film The Shawshank Redemption, worked for five long years to finally get The Walking Dead to come alive (or dead) on the small screen before he was unceremoniously dropped from the series after production on season two began. Subsequently his replacement Glen Mazzara was also released from the show after he ran the rest of season two and season three.
Now for the first time since the ugly break, Darabont is opening up about the whole ordeal while confirming what just about everybody has been suspecting this entire time — it was all AMC’s fault.
“Look, I really haven’t spoken of this yet – I will, I’ll get there – but I had to take some time off after that to really reassess everything, to really get over the emotional devastation of having some truly malevolent people tear asunder a brilliant family that had gathered to create this hit for them,” Darabont told Rolling Stone.
“It was a very, very deep and loving family, the cast and the crew, and to have that torn apart was – when somebody throws a hand-grenade into that situation, it’s tremendously emotionally trying. So would I want to watch another episode of The Walking Dead after that? Are you fucking kidding me? No, you put that traumatic disappointment behind you and move on with your life.”
Darabont has since moved on from The Walking Dead where he is now working on a new noir show for TNT called ‘Mob City‘ which starts Jon Bernthal, who coincidentally he also hired on The Walking Dead (Shane).
It’s hard to say if Mazzara will one day open up about his exit from the popular zombie show after a press release simply stated that the parties agreed to part ways. It’s probably easy to guess that’s not exactly how everything went down.
