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With such a successful short-but-sweet first season that has already garnered increased ratings and a successful series order, what could be wrong with the writing staff of AMC's new hit series The Walking Dead? Well, nothing may be wrong per se, but there is something going on behind the scenes as Deadline reports series writer/executive producer/director Frank Darabont has gotten rid of all the writers from this first season. The industry blog points out that while writing staffs do have line-up changes from season-to-season, a complete overhaul isn't customary. Apparently Darabont is looking to work through the second season without a writing staff and merely assign scripts to freelance writers. More after the jump.

While this might seem a bit out of the ordinary, Darabont does come from feature films (although he was also behind some of The Young Indiana Jones), so maybe he's just shaking things up a bit (after all he was involved with writing nearly all of the episodes from the first season). It's also mentioned that the freelance method of writing has been mostly successfully employed for Torchwood from Starz and BBC (a method borrowed from the UK where the show was originally spawned). However, this new method may bring some heat from the Writers Guild and could even prove difficult with 13 episodes lined up for the second season. Apparently the decision to use freelance writers isn't final, and the series may end up utilizing both a writing staff and freelancers from time to time. I just hope this doesn't screw up what has been one of the best new series on television. A writing staff can help create unity in the story and usually is extremely well-versed in the show's mythology, which, in the case of a comic adaptation like this, would be very helpful. I'm not saying this is a bad idea, but it does seem to prove rather worrisome. What do you guys think?

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