EXCLUSIVE: Glen Mazzara has closed a deal to join AMC’s breakout hit The Walking Dead as a writing executive producer and No.2 to creator/ executive producer/ director Frank Darabont for the show’s upcoming second season. He is in the process of putting together a staff of about 5 writers.
The move comes 3 months after the writing staff for The Walking Dead’s first season was disbanded, including then-No. 2 to Darabont, writing executive producer Charles “Chic” Eglee (most of the writers were let go, Eglee joined another project, FX’s Powers). At the time, Durabont was exploring the idea of forgoing a writing staff altogether in favor of using freelancers. In the end, the show is reverting to the traditional writing staff model with a staff comparable or a little bigger in size to Season 1 whose order was for 6 episodes vs. 13 for Season 2. One of the 6 episodes of Walking Dead‘s first season was written on freelance basis by Mazzara. The Shield alum Mazzara recently served as showrunner on the first season of Starz’s Crash and the second season of Hawthorne.
It would be cool if they actually read the comics.
Anyway good luck to Glenn Mazzara, he proved he can deliver with Crash s1.
Durabont was right to fire his staff – by the second episode they seemed to be sleep-walking themselves, with tired characterizations and all too familiar plotlines. At least Durabont had the integrity to admit that he’d hired the wrong people and blow them out. And the dialogue! God help those poor actors … ! Let’s hope next season he throw’s some real curveballs at the audience, dispensing with those hack morality tales and lame “sacrifice ourselves for the greater good” horseshit. We need to see some hair-raising and blood-curdling “kill-or-be-killed” jeopardy this time.
damn straight!
so…. powers on fx is looking like a go?
Glen Mazzara is an extremely talented writer and a wonderful guy. Lucky for Walking Dead and any staff who works with him. Go Glen!
Excellent choice – Mazzara is a great writer.
Mazzara’s a great writer and producer. Have no fear, the series is now in very capable hands.
Darabont is an ego maniac and does not how to work with others, unfortunately Mazzara’s talent is going to go to waste on Walking Dead.
Thank God.
Writing on this show was so bad in was astonishing.
Hopefully this show will now reach it’s potential.
You don’t bring in someone like Mazzara and still claim the “creator” is No #1.
Good on AMC to put the fire out before Darabont burned down the whole damn thing.
What do Frank Darabont, Charles “Chic” Eglee and Glen Mazzara, have in common? They all met on “The Shield”. One of the most innovative shows on TV. “The Shield” showed directors a newer faster and more exciting way of making a TV show.
All the big directors that worked on “The Shield” wanted to work with those guys again. Like the collaboration of David Mamet, who like Frank Darabont made an episode of “The Shield”, and Shawn Ryan. Those two later partnered to work on “The Unit”
P.S. Glen Mazzara is going get some crap from ex-Shield writer and show runner of “Sons of Anarchy”, Kurt Sutter. Sutter is mad at Darabont for hiring away “his” sound guy.
Interesting – so Durabont found a creative way to let go all of the writers so that he could hire an all-new staff.
Sounds like the Cabinet situation in Egypt.
Don’t know Mr. Mazzara personally, but he’s been an integral part of many shows I’ve admired.
No more fear about The Walking Dead, folks. He’s gonna whip it into shape East Coast style!
Frank Darabont is a disgrace for wanting to write a show without a writing staff. Where was the WGA in that regard? Typical union. They’ll go after the little guy and make his life a living hell but the big wigs can do whatever the hell they want to others in the union. And Darabont is supposed to be a writer that other writes admire! Unbelievable.
Comics would be great if not for those whiny readers. TV would be perfect if not for those entitled writers.
There is a bizarre entertainment industry groupthink that says “everything would be just swell if it weren’t for those damn content creators and end-product consumers getting in the way.” It flys in the face of reality and it is effing bizarre.
That said, this is wonderful news, i don’t know Mazzara but I know his work and I’m a big fan.
I agree to whole fuel/air bomb that you can hide from with sandbags was really bad the number of plot point left hanging is horrid and the characters left shallow still netter than most of the swill available
Congrats to Glen Mazzara! Folks, for those who do not know Glen, he’s as tireless a Producer you could ever find. He is simply one of the best people in our business and I’m very happy for his success.
SOOOOO much better than that AWFUL HAWTHORNE TNT show- what a waste of his time and talent-
I bet he is so thrilled to be free from that dated crap pile