Is Matthew Weiner's Greed Ruining AMC?
Sons of Anarchy creator and Twitter scourge Kurt Sutter took to his account last night and fired off a few upset tweets claiming that Frank Darabont was fired from The Walking Dead because of his colleague and Mad Men creator Matt Weiner's money demands.
In the tweets, Sutter (who doesn't work for AMC, Sons is on FX, but I guess knows the biz anyway) accused Weiner of demanding so much money for Mad Men that its fellow AMC shows Walking Dead and Breaking Bad suffered.
This actually isn't that implausible, considering Weiner goes through notoriously labored negotiations seemingly every time they're necessary. And while AMC's shows are certainly critically acclaimed and do earn attention from certain coveted luxury advertisers, it's still a small network with a limited amount of funds. If the guy who created the show that put you on the map wants more money than everyone else, you probably give him more.
As for Darabont, he apparently did get a bit temperamental about budget cuts to his own show (which is understandable, in that Walking Dead is the network's highest-rated series) so that probably contributed to his dismissal. But still it's a shame that Weiner, Darabont, and Breaking Bad's Vince Gilligan couldn't all just come together and work as a team. Too bad a television network has never worked that way in history. Oh well! [via EW]