According to one of three places legally allowed to have scoops by Hollywood, Deadline, series honcho Frank Darabont is planning to send the writing staff of AMC’s hit show The Walking Dead to the showers in favor of no writing staff for season two’s double-sized onslaught. Though I don’t think Darabont is firing them for writing a pretty lousy show (our latest tag team review), if the end result is more watchable and less arch [ie: as much not like the comics as possible] program I’m all for it. We’ll see if the Writer’s Guild allows such an unorthodox (in the states) approach to fly.
The idea of freelancers coming on is intriguing. Now that the show’s a hit it can do individual stories. Imagine that the world is set and now it can almost feature a bunch of cool zombie stories written by diverse writers and not have to always stick to the “band of boring survivors” motif.
I’m all for that. I’m very critical of this show and so far have found it to be just another Stephen King miniseries*. Change is good. The writing for this show has been its biggest fault. Here’s hoping that this unique approach is something that comes to fruition and allows some new voices to be heard. We certainly don’t need it to be a place to audition hacks, but regardless of how this season has been I still have utmost faith in Mr. Frank Darabont.
Stay tuned this coming Monday for CHUD’s surely epic review of the last episode and postmortem on the first season.
* I am fully aware this is not based on a Stephen King work.
27 comments
Are you aware that your biggest complaints of this show are when they depart from the comics, per your own reviews?
So essentially it could become World War Z: The Series? Sign me up, please. My interest in the show waned after the first couple of episodes, completely uninteresting characters being the main problem.
Can you follow suit, and fire your entire writting staff here, including yourself, in favor of people who can write reviews. PLEASE…
So you want it to have nothing to do with the source material other than the title? Yeah more GORE, less survivors, because zombies are sooooo fucking "interesting" to begin with.
Bad, Bad, Bad idea! The comic is awesome! The sucess of the story is that people care about the characters. There's still sooo much more story to tell! Even if they loosely follw the comic, it'll be awesome! Besides, It's " The Walking Dead". Why change it now to something else? Improve the writing, fine. Don't change it into " A Zombie Show" If they made that too or WWZ. that would be cool though!
Chris, may I suggest the other movie websites? Are you really saying you're here on CHUD and love everything about the site except for the writing? What, do you really like the color GREEN? Fuck off, sir!
Wow. thin-skinned much? Most of us come here for the scoops, face it. Your staff of critics is generally laughable- what you fawn over gives a great percentage of us lots of guffaws.
And yes, I do like the color green.
Apparently they've never read one of Renn Brown's reviews….
Aaaaarghh!!!! Not the captcha again!
#7 needs a diaper change. If you just like the scoops, click the scoop links. Nobody forces you to read the reviews or opinion pieces. Typical brainless internet commenter post.
On topic, while I empathize with the joblessness of the writers, the show really was being hampered by bad writing and some bad acting, and you can't really effectively substitute new actors in. Let's hope the writing was mostly affected by those let go and not Darabont himself and that the show can improve next season.
Well, its a shame that Frank seems to be letting the internet critics dictate how he moves the show. I thought the writing was no where near as bad as people want to make it out to be. Its been a solid show so far. My only complaint is that its so short a 1st season. The idea of bringing in guest writers though does sound interesting though. I want this show to be a continuing story line about the group. Not just a serial series where what happened the week before doesn't matter so much.
I've heard a lot of people bitch about the TV series not being close to the source material. Having read a good chunk of the "Walking Dead" series, I am willing to say that I like both the comics and TV show equally. The comics are well done, but they become episodic in no time. ("Yay we're safe! Oh shit we're not! We just lost 1 – 3 of our people because we got careless." Then in the next issue its wash, rinse, and repeat.) The TV show has been keeping it more interesting, what with Norman Reedus and Michael Rooker being thrown into the mix and all, plus the decision to run off to the CDC. And why not give a little more love to Frank Darabont; this guy has had a solid career both as a director and screenwriter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Darabont#Career). I think he's done a bang-up job and can't wait to see what else he brings to the series.
@ hank_chinaski, the season is quite short, but a lot of first seasons are for many shows. Don't worry though; season 2 will guarantee at least 13 hour long episodes.
PS – Could someone at CHUD please fix the comment box? Almost every time I try to leave a comment, it says there was an error. Kind of annoying if you ask me.
While, I think Slater from the CHUD boards is a loathsome human being, I think he would be perfect to submit freelance work for this show. If he has time from the current project.
re: comment #2. Yes if it becomes World War Z the series then I am all for that. My biggest fear of the movie of that is that it's going to try and force one narrative on something that should be a mini-series a la Band of Brothers. Never read the comics of Walking Dead but love the show and I'm pretty sure Darabont wouldn't knowingly shaft it.
Wrong. Bad.
I'm only up to Vol 3 on the comic but so far the departures from the comic have been ok and I get the need to do so and I'm fine with that.
Last weeks episode its clear they were skipping the gated housing area, and the farm, but also the prison?
I had hoped they would detour for a bit and go back but….maybe not.
While I agree there has been some dry spots the show has been great, not sure this is a step in the right direction.
Who cares how closely it follows the comic? Give me some characters that I might actually give two shits about. Or at least characters that I can stomach on a weekly basis.
This article tells us why Nick has no tv shows of his own.
Funny, you guys liked episode 6 which was my least liked. This series, along with Dexter and Spartacus is among the best, ever, on TV. Man, you guys are critical! Or maybe you just like pissing people off for responses.
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"You guys suck! You don't know what you're talking about! You're dumb! I've read all or your articles and I hate all of them!" And yet you retards apparently can't stop reading them. Uh, episode 5 just aired, Dogwalker. I don't know what you're talking about. And yes, movie/TV critics can often be critical. That's kinda the point.
The television series has been damn near perfect thus far, so why mess with a good thing? I like Darabont, but this sounds like a very bad idea to me.
I'm not sure what in the news story has led people to assume that it's going to turn into some sort of anthology series. They're not going to have a permanent writing staff, but it's still going to be a continuing narrative following the same group of characters, loosely following the plot of the comics.
Too bad people feel the need to flame a Fan Site … if these guys are getting paid to do this, it ain't much. What is wrong with having a sincere appreciation of stuff and writing about it? Why do you assholes need to pick them apart? As he stated, please go find another page to read … may I suggest Badass Digest seems more your speed? I agree, FUCK OFF, SIR!
I would like to go on record as the person to recommend the next big thing: Zombies on horses. It hasn't been done in any significant way, and when it gets made I want my cut.
Try #8
Apparently, the CHUD folks have never read the comics, because the focus of that is on the survivors and the basic human condition, not on random action and zombie gore/carnage. But then again, this wouldn't be a CHUD news piece without some snark and fanboy ideas of how they'd do something better than what's presented.
I like the series from the beginning…
I am a very big fan of it..I uploaded some of the very exciting homepages for the Walking dead…
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