Just six months after stepping down as the showrunner and executive producer of AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” Frank Darabont has already set up a new, greenlit TV pilot at TNT and may be bringing one of his old stars with him.
Jon Bernthal, who currently plays Shane on the hit zombie drama, is in early conversations to lead Darabont’s “L.A. Noir,” a period crime drama set in the ’40s and ’50s. Bernthal would play Joe Teague, “the Los Angeles cop at the center of the show that examines corruption in the LAPD and ties between police and underworld figures,” according to Variety.
Despite sharing a similar title and time period, the series has no relation with Rockstar Games’ recent video game release.
Bernthal’s Shane is the second male lead on “The Walking Dead,” which is on a winter hiatus and will return on February 12. It’s highly unlikely Bernthal would be able to do both, since the two series would shoot on opposite sides of the country (“Walking Dead” films in Atlanta). Instead, the rumor points to a more finite fate for Shane this season. (Spoiler: he doesn’t survive long in the graphic novel series.)
TV Line ran a blind item in November about a major cast member asking to leave the show, which points to Bernthal and the backstage drama last summer. The leaked news of his interest certainly spoils “The Walking Dead” a bit, even if Bernthal’s role in “L.A. Noir” ultimately doesn’t pan out. Either way, it seems like a win for the jilted former showrunner.
Darabont stepped down, or was ousted depending on who you believe, in July 2011, while production was underway on season 2. The split was acrimonious, of course, reportedly a culmination of Darabont’s concerns over the creative direction of the show and AMC’s cutbacks as a result of “Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner having his way with the cable network in negotiations. Darabont had developed the series for nearly five years before it aired, then wrote and directed the pilot and executive produced until his exit.
Darabont is perhaps best known for directing The Shawshank Redemption, though his feature work was sporadic. Rumors that he hasn’t adjusted to the daily grind of a series seem unfounded, since he has another lined up. “In TV, you have to get ideas across in a more economical way,” he gushed to Deadline a month before he was fired. “But the process is fundamentally the same [as features], just accelerated. There’s no time for second guessing. The wheels are in constant motion. I love that about television. If I’d known how much fun it was, I’d have done it years ago.”
He will write and direct the pilot of “L.A. Noir,” which is based on John Buntin’s nonfiction book L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America’s Most Seductive City. Only the pilot has been greenlit, so no word on its scheduling yet.
