--- title: The Shawshank Redemption's Frank Darabont on His New TV Show The Walking Dead description: For a while, it seemed as if director Frank Darabont was going to become something like Stephen King's in-house movie director. He launched his career... canonical: https://time.com/archive/6911195/the-shawshank-redemptions-frank-darabont-on-his-new-tv-show-the-walking-dead/ author: Gilbert Cruz article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2010-10-29T04:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-22T16:22:04.422Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: The Shawshank Redemption's Frank Darabont on His New TV Show The Walking Dead og:description: For a while, it seemed as if director Frank Darabont was going to become something like Stephen King's in-house movie director. He launched his career... og:url: https://time.com/archive/6911195/the-shawshank-redemptions-frank-darabont-on-his-new-tv-show-the-walking-dead/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt23de950c61e924f0/698a4b87096a947ae46af60f/360_walking_dead_1028.jpg?branch=production&width=750&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: 360_walking_dead_1028.jpg og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Shawshank Redemption's Frank Darabont on His New TV Show The Walking Dead twitter:description: For a while, it seemed as if director Frank Darabont was going to become something like Stephen King's in-house movie director. He launched his career... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt23de950c61e924f0/698a4b87096a947ae46af60f/360_walking_dead_1028.jpg?branch=production&width=750&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) # The Shawshank Redemption's Frank Darabont on His New TV Show The Walking Dead > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with Ally. Ally is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: July 2026. ## Ally: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Ally is a digital financial services company offering online-only banking, including checking and savings accounts, through Ally.com and its mobile apps. Launched in 2009 as an original disruptor in financial services, Ally was built to challenge outdated banking norms with a simpler, more convenient way to bank. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. by [Gilbert Cruz](https://time.com/author/gilbert-cruz/) Oct 29, 2010 4:00 AM UTC  A scene from AMC's The Walking Dead A scene from AMC's The Walking DeadAMC / Everett by [Gilbert Cruz](https://time.com/author/gilbert-cruz/) Oct 29, 2010 4:00 AM UTC For a while, it seemed as if director Frank Darabont was going to become something like Stephen King’s in-house movie director. He launched his career with the now beloved prison drama _The Shawshank Redemption_, moved to the Oscar-nominated prison drama _The Green Mile_ and ended up with the people-imprisoned-in-a-supermarket movie _The Mist_, all based on stories by King. A self-admitted horror and sci-fi geek (ask him about the _Invasion of the Body Snatchers_ and _War of the Worlds_ posters in his dining room), Darabont’s latest project is _The Walking Dead_, a zombie apocalypse series based on the Robert Kirkman comics, which debuts on AMC on Halloween night. Darabont spoke to TIME about horror movies, why the undead don’t run and the weirdness of having grisly zombies on the same network as _Mad Men_. **There are so many zombie movies out there. Were there specific ones that influenced** **_The Walking Dead_** **?** Well, the Book of Genesis really is _Night of the Living Dead_, which I’m kind of shocked to realize is a classic now. That just makes me old, I suppose. It didn’t feel like a classic when I first saw it. It was a very disreputable film, spoken of in whispers. It was one of those things you had to catch at a midnight screening, if anything. Without that original film from 1968, there wouldn’t be a _Walking Dead_ — the whole zombie thing wouldn’t even exist. [(See “Rise of the Zombies.”)](https://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1913325,00.html) **What from that movie stands out for you?** I think people who haven’t seen the movie, or who haven’t seen it in a while, may not credit it for being as character-driven as it is. But _Night of the Living Dead_ is a very character-driven piece. And it was, by the way, other than \[those with\] Sidney Poitier, maybe, the only movie of its time that had a black male as its lead, which was pretty groundbreaking stuff in its day. Consider 1968, consider the strife that was going on at the time. That was a pretty bold move on their part. I always admired that. **Did you purposefully try to stay away from zombie books and movies so that you wouldn’t be tainted by the ideas of others?** Being the old-school guy that I am, I wanted to tell a great tale that subscribed to \[creator Robert\] Kirkman’s work and the original George Romero conception of this world. That’s the world we’re in. I did stay away from watching any zombie movies or reading any zombie fiction during this time because I really didn’t want to be influenced. I wanted to have as much free thought going into it as possible. And hopefully that will help lend a texture to _The Walking Dead_ that allows it to be its own thing rather than borrowing a page from someone else’s book. Of course, there’s been so much of it throughout the years now that I suppose some comparisons are inevitable. And that’s O.K. If there are comparisons to be drawn, we’ll just call it homage. [(See the top 25 horror movies of all time.)](https://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1676793%5F1676808,00.html) **When it comes to comparing zombie movies these days, it seems like whether a zombie shambles or runs is the thing that people talk about more than anything else. It’s such a minute detail, but people are so hung up over it.** Never underestimate the ability of certain Internet dwellers to take something minute and turn it into a mountain. My feeling was always, with _Walking Dead_ — again, wanting to go back to the original Romero mythos — is that they shouldn’t ever run faster than the first zombie we see in _Night of the Living Dead_. He gets up a pretty good head of steam, but he’s no Olympic sprinter. **One of the things that struck me about the first episode of** **_Walking Dead_** **was how much silence there was. I hadn’t seen a movie or a TV show in such a long time that was so comfortable with quiet. I was reminded of** **_The Exorcist_** **. The sound design in that movie is just ridiculously good.** _The Exorcist_ is amazing because it recognizes that silences can be as powerful as sound effects. I found that it’s always been a bit of a struggle when dealing with sound to convince the sound guys that, yes, I am looking for silent stretches, I am looking for silences because that is part of the music of the film. And particularly nowadays, these fellas are always leaned upon to not have those silences. The movies that I grew up with weren’t afraid of those silences, whether it was a Kubrick film — talk about a movie that handles silence like _2001_ — or _The Exorcist_. I remember the best scare in that movie — I remember the entire audience jumping three feet in the air — was after this long stretch of really quiet stuff, suddenly the phone rings, really loudly. I love playing with stuff like that. **Given the other movies you’ve made —** **_The Shawshank Redemption_** **and** **_The Green Mile_** **— are you purposefully going to stay away from the scenes later in the** **_Walking Dead_** **comic series set in prison?** _\[Laughs.\]_ No! I can’t wait to get to the prison, actually. Because there’s just so much good, rich storytelling there. That’s when it gets really dark and intense and heated. There’s some sort of recidivism in my career. I just keep going back to prison. It’s inevitable somehow that I wind up in some prison setting. But there you go. You gotta embrace it and go with it. It’s like when Stephen King called me up and told me he was writing another prison story with _The Green Mile_. I said, “Well, I’m not looking to go back to prison particularly. It depends on the story.” Of course, when I read the story, it was brilliant and I _had_ to go back to prison. You follow where the best story leads. If that means I’m behind bars again, so be it. **It’s kind of crazy that AMC, the home of** **_Mad Men_** **and** **_Breaking Bad_** **, would do a horror show like** **_The Walking Dead_** **. What do you think it says that this show actually exists on a network as good as AMC is now?** It absolutely blows my mind that zombies, which, for decades, was this subgenre of horror that appealed to a core group of geeks like me, has gotten so much mainstream acceptance in the last five years. All these years, all these decades, I was part of this little group of people with a very specialized interest, and suddenly this obscure thing has blossomed into grandmothers walking into Barnes and Noble and buying zombie books for their grandkids. It’s a very strange feeling. I’ve been busy on this production for a year, and I poke my head up and, all of a sudden, zombies are everywhere. [See TIME’s Fall Entertainment Preview.](https://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,2016836,00.html) [See the 100 best movies of all time.](https://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,1953094,00.html) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6911195/the-shawshank-redemptions-frank-darabont-on-his-new-tv-show-the-walking-dead/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6911195/the-shawshank-redemptions-frank-darabont-on-his-new-tv-show-the-walking-dead/"},"headline":"The Shawshank Redemption's Frank Darabont on His New TV Show The Walking Dead","datePublished":"2010-10-29T04:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-22T16:22:04.422Z","description":"For a while, it seemed as if director Frank Darabont was going to become something like Stephen King's in-house movie director. 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