Hollywood Babble On & On #639: Walking Dead Writers Get Their Walking Papers

Welcome to the show folks...

Meanwhile another show isn't being exactly welcome to its writers. Frank Darabont, executive producer and showrunner of AMC's breakout zombie hit The Walking Dead has given the shows staff writers their walking papers. That's right, after the huge success of Season 1's six episodes, he's going into the 13 episode 2nd Season by himself, with planned contributions from the comic's creator Robert Kirkman, and some freelancers.

Really?

I can't say that I'm all that keen on this idea, now I could snark about it based on rumors that Mr. Darabont is hard to get along with, but I don't like to deal in rumors, because I'm not an insider with insider info, I'm as far out as you can get and still be on the same continent. So, in the interest of fairness, which I rarely practice, I will take a look at the Pros and Cons of the business/creative ramifications of this decision.

PROS:

1. I'm assuming that this is somehow going to save the show some money, and the original writers might still be rehired under some convoluted Hollywood style accounting scheme.

2. Darabont's defenders state that the series is following a more British style model. The British model is that the series has a limited number of episodes, and a limited number of writers. Many British TV series are written by a single writer as one big sort of 'novel for television.' The closest a more mainstream American series came to the "one writer" plan was J. Michael Straczynski and his sci-fi series Babylon 5, where he wrote entire seasons by himself for a total of 92 of the series 110 episodes.

3. Other defenders say that the series is pretty much already written inside the pages of Robert Kirkman's ongoing and long running comic book series.

Now let's look at the...

CONS

1. The odds that the original staff writer are going to be rehired as freelancers under some Hollywood accounting scheme are pretty slim. Resentment can come into Hollywood relationships, and other shows love to poach people with time on hits. Especially a come from nowhere, unexpected hit like Walking Dead.

2. While I do advocate the British model for certain types of TV series, and that some shows do better as a limited run miniseries than as an ongoing. These sorts of stories are small scale, and self-contained with an obvious beginning, middle, and end, and often years between each 'series.'

However, The Walking Dead, by the nature of its source material is a large, long, and ongoing sort of serial drama about survival in a world where civilization has ceased to exist.

Yes, Straczynski did it on Babylon 5, but it kind of showed. I was never a big fan of the show, mostly because of parts where plot-lines were stretched out when they should have been wrapped up quickly, and explanations denied when logic screamed for them because asking and answering questions didn't fit with the show's central plan. This could have been avoided if there was a bit more collaboration with fresh eyes and minds, instead of trying to go it pretty much alone.

3. Yes, the series is pretty much pre-written in comic book form. But that's not as easy a proposition as you think. Adapting a pre-existing work is a huge can of worms, requiring an understanding of the source story, the medium it was told in, and the best strategies for bringing the story, themes, and characters to the screen.

An ongoing story like The Walking Dead requires all these and probably then some, including a level of team work that might not be found with a bunch of insecure freelancers.

Now that I weighed the pros and cons I have to admit that I'm still a tad uneasy with this decision, and will have to wait and see how it's going to turn out.