Deadline reports that Frank Darabont, executive producer and writer/director of AMC’s THE WALKING DEAD, has released all of the writing staff from season one of the popular comic book-based Zombie series.
The fact that there will be “changes to the writing staff” was confirmed today by AMC.
The site says it’s rumored that Frank Darabont may ultimately opt to not replace the staff, but instead go with freelance writers. Half of the six episodes of this first short season were written by Darabont himself (penning two), and one by comic book creator Robert Kirkman. Perhaps he plans to work out the plotline of the entire 13-episode second season himself (or with Kirkman), and simply assign scripts to freelancers.
This is not entirely unprecedented; BABYLON 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski dumped his entire writing staff after two seasons. He wrote the bulk of the next three years himself, with only two freelance scripts, if memory serves.
It’s unlikely that Frank Darabont intends to go that far.