The emails were sent to AMC executives and crew during the fraught production of the first season of 'The Walking Dead'.
- Jul 14, 2017
AceShowbiz - Abusive emails sent by former "The Walking Dead" showrunner Frank Darabont to AMC have been released amid his $280 million lawsuit against the network. AMC released the emails as a part of its defense against the producer.
In the emails, Frank once threatened to kill people and throw bodies as he lashed out at the show's cast and crew. "I am in a state of boiling rage right now," Frank wrote to exec Gale Anne Hurd in 2011 regarding issues with production.
"I have never been a screamer, but I am now. The work being done on this episode has turned me into one. Congratulations, you all accomplished what I thought was impossible," he continued, "You've turned me into a raging a**hole. Thanks a lot, you f***ers."
"Please let's stop invoking 'the writers room.' There IS no writers room, which you know as well as I do. I am the writers room. The f***ing lazy assholes who were supposedly going to be my showrunners threw that responsibility on me after wasting five months of my time," he added.
Frank also lashed out at two writers saying he should have "hunted them down and f***ing killed them with a brick, then gone and burned down their homes." He said, "F**k 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."
In response to AMC's filing, Frank claimed in his own motion on Thursday, July 13 that the emails were sent "during an intense and stressful two-year period of work during which I was fighting like a mother lion to protect the show from harm."
"Each of these emails was sent because a 'professional' showed up whose laziness, indifference, or incompetence threatened to sink the ship of production and added unfair and unnecessary burden to their colleagues in the cast and crew," he explained, "My tone was the result of the stress and magnitude of this extraordinary crisis. The language and hyperbole of my emails were harsh, but so were the circumstances. As for the enormous problems they describe, I stand by these emails to the last detail."
