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.