Television fans could not have been more excited when AMC announced that it was adapting Robert Kirkman’s beloved comic series The Walking Dead with Frank Darabont serving as showrunner. But somehow, after the show’s well-received first six episodes, those same fans managed to find a new height of excitement to reach. The Walking Dead‘s first season was a hit and Darabont’s new show was a rising juggernaut.
But then the network suddenly dumped Darabont during season two and speculation about his ouster has run rampant ever since. Now thanks to court documents from Darabont’s lawsuit against the network, we can see one of the contributing factors to his downfall: he was a huge dick.
The Hollywood Reporter has obtained the court documents, which include crazy emails from Darabont to executive producer Gale Anne Hurd from June 2011 that read: “F— you all for giving me chest pains because of the staggering f—ing incompetence, blindness to the important beats, and the beyond-arrogant lack of regard for what is written being exhibited on set every day. I deserve better than a heart attack because people are too stupid to read a script and understand the words. Does anybody disagree with me? Then join the C-cam operator and go find another job that doesn’t involve deliberately f—ing up my show scene by scene.”
And that’s not even the worst of them.
“I am in a state of boiling rage right now,” Darabont wrote in another email to Hurd. ““Everybody especially our directors better wake the f— up and pay attention or I will start killing people and throwing bodies out the door.” In another email from 2010, Darabont targeted to of the show’s writers and said he should have “hunted them down and f—ing killd them with a brick, then gone and burned down their homes.”
Do you think maybe Darabont took the post-apocalyptic setting of his show a bit too seriously?
The former showrunner and his agents filed a lawsuit against AMC in 2013 alleging that they were denied their rightful share of the show’s profits and are claiming $280 million in damages.
“Rather than a referendum on me, this lawsuit is about AMC’s radically undervaluing The Walking Dead in order not to share profits in a manner reflecting the show’s actual fair market value,” says Darabont in his affidavit. “This lawsuit is also about AMC’s refusal to share the unprecedented success of the show with the people who actually created that success for them, and about AMC’s self-dealing and corporate greed.”
Right, okay…but you did threaten to kill someone with a brick and burn down their house…So, there’s that.
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