“The Walking Dead” axes its screenwriting staff – head shot or near miss?

This is an interesting story (and comments board) from Deadline Hollywood’s Nellie Andreeva:

The Walking Dead Lets Go of Writers; Considers No Writing Staff For Season 2

Writer turnover on series between seasons is commonplace but wholesale overhauls are unusual. What’s more, I hear Darabont is looking to forgo having a writing staff for the second season of Walking Dead altogether and assign scripts to freelancers.

I suppose this might be good for some up and coming writers, but the WGA may have a problem with it.

I hadn’t heard that Frank Darabont had a bad reputation in the industry (if some of these comments are to be believed) and it’s interesting timing as I was just noticing that the writing and performances of the show were lagging a bit — I couldn’t help but think that casting is especially holding the series back from maintaining the quality of the first two episodes. I’m not sure they picked the strongest performers to fill out the cast once they made the crucial choice of the lead actor in Andrew Lincoln as Sheriff Grimes.

It should also be noted that Season One is only a 6-episode mini-series, so the question looms: Can they pull off a full season? Or a “cable season” of 13 episodes? Deadline poses the same question…

…while the first season of The Walking Dead was only 6 episodes, its second-season order is for 13, which may prove harder to manage … with no writing staff.

Whatever the future holds, The Walking Dead is such a huge hit for AMC that it will really need to jump the shark in Season Two to lose its core audience. Let’s hope it’s not another Heroes.

-Dan

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