Frank Darabont felt a major betrayal when AMC fired him in 2011 from The Walking Dead, months before the second season was set to begin production. He has been quite vocal about the same in the past as the director got engaged in legal lawsuits with the company for years. Since then, many speculations tried to unravel the real story as to what led the company to let the original showrunner go.
The three-time Academy Award nominee is not a newbie in the film-making business as he is known for movies like The Shawshank Redemption (1994), The Green Mile (1999), and The Mist (2007). Back in 2013, he addressed how he felt about exiting the show.
Frank Darabont Addressed His Dismissal from The Walking Dead
When the 64-year-old director in an interview with Entertainment Weekly was asked whether he watched the series after his firing or not, he firmly denied it.
He mentioned,
“No more than I would go to the wedding of somebody who broke my heart and left me for the Pilates instructor. One does become very emotionally attached to the things that one does. I get tremendously invested. Why would I do that? Absolutely not, I won’t.”
After getting fired from the second second of The Walking Dead, Frank Darabont was replaced by Glen Mazzara. The latter too was then replaced by Scott Gimple. However, the behind-the-scenes drama was much more than one would have anticipated.
The former filed a series of lawsuits against the company citing that several contractual agreements were affected by his unjust firing. Not just that, he also claimed to have never been paid for developing the show as he did for five years when he sold it to AMC. But, a Variety report released in 2017 hinted at a completely different direction which revealed the reason as to why the studio let him go.
Frank Darabont’s ‘Erratic’ Behavior Led to His Exit
![Frank Darabont [Credit: 1994 Castle Rock Entertainment]](https://fwmedia.fandomwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/19223802/Photo-2023-10-20T080738.603.jpg)
The reports surfaced amid the legal lawsuits between Darabont and AMC network over his profit distribution in the series. As the company was seeking for the case to be dismissed, their filing included reports that unraveled his ‘erratic’ behavior.
One evidence presented was Darabont’s 2011 email which he wrote to show executive producer Gale Anne Hurd talking about the production issues related to the first season. As per Variety,
“Everybody especially our directors better wake the f—k up and pay attention or I will start killing people and throwing bodies out the door.”
Meanwhile, in a 2010 email, he expressed his frustration at the show’s two writers stating that he should have “hunted them down and f—ing killed them with a brick, then gone and burned down their homes.”
Former AMC programming chief Joel Stillerman cited several issues related to the director, including not meeting script deadlines, poor management of budget, and writers among other reasons left them with no option but to let him go.
Addressing those emails, The Mist director clarified that his harsh tone resulted from “the stress and magnitude of this extraordinary crisis.” He admitted that his tone was harsh but continued to maintain the difficult circumstances that he had to tackle at the time.
