‘The Walking Dead’ season 3: Was Robert Kirkman reason for Glen Mazarra exit?

Even though “The Walking Dead” season 3 is not back on the air until February, there has still been plenty of heavy drama going on for the past few weeks stemming from the news that Glen Mazzara is out as showrunner. This is a man who has been largely credited for helping the show become an even more massive hit than it was originally, and this current batch of episodes has also thus far proven to be the most exciting and action-packed yet.

So with these positives in mind, shouldn’t Mazzara still be there? This move was questions and highly criticized by Glen’s former co-workers from “The Shield” in Shawn Ryan and Kurt Sutter, with the “Sons of Anarchy” showrunner suggesting in a recent video that Robert Kirkman, the creator of the comic series on which the show is based, is too involved despite having no experience as a showrunner.

So are these views from Sutter accurate? Based on we’re hearing, the answer is yes … but it is also not the full story. Let’s first start with what a source is saying about Kirkman to The Hollywood Reporter:

“I believe Robert wants to maintain a certain amount of his control, and AMC needs Robert for the fan base.”

However, a source also maintains that while Robert’s desired to be involved in the series has been a major cause for conflict over the course of the past several several seasons, it is far from the only issue. There were also reportedly problems between Mazzara and other producers, including suggestions that there not enough material and specific points late in season 3, and production had to be delayed because of it.

While the circumstances here are very different, there are also parts of this whole story that are reminiscent in ways to what went on with “Community” and Dan Harmon last year, largely in that the showrunner seemed to be doing a great job, but issues behind the scenes were potentially leading to problems down the road. Ultimately, the biggest issue from our standpoint here is merely that AMC has banked so much on a property that is basically a loose adaptation, and because they have the comic writer involved in such a direct capacity (in contrast to what “True Blood” is doing independently from Charlaine Harris), it creates a “too many cooks in the kitchen” sort of scenario.

Do you think that we could see an effective “Walking Dead” showrunner for season 4, or do you think that AMC could just opt at this point to just name someone a head writer and move forward? If you want to read some more on what is actually coming up for the show, you can do so over at the link here.

Photo: AMC