‘The Walking Dead’ season 4: Scott Gimple to replace Glen Mazarra

While production on “The Walking Dead” season 4 will not actually begin until later this year (and season 3 has yet to even air its second half), we do now have some other major news now to report: who is actually going to be the next brave soul to try and steer this ship on AMC.

Sources have confirmed that supervising producer Scott Gimple is set to become the new showrunner on the series moving forward into the upcoming episodes, and is now the third person to wear this title in four seasons of the show. Frank Darabont was removed of his post midway during season 2 production, and was replaced rather seamlessly by Glen Mazarra.

The advantage to hiring Gimple is simple in that he knows the show fairly well, having been a part of it ever since season 2. However, the disadvantage is that most of the series that he has written for substantially in the past, including “Chase,” “FlashForward,” and “Life,” have all failed to last beyond just a single season. This is not to say that he is a terrible writer by any means, as none of the aforementioned shows failed byecause of their writing; they just suffered because of some bad decisions by their networks.

Gimple’s biggest challenge in this post is going to be really all about trying to balance out a variety of different egos that are coming at him, including AMC (who has been chided with not handling its creative team properly and giving them the freedom to create original work) as well as comic writer Robert Kirkman, a man with a deep attachment to his characters but with little experience running a television show.

Do you think that Gimple is the man for the job? In case you haven’t heard what is coming up for season 3, you can find out over here.

Photo: AMC