Many people would claim that Frank Darabont has made the best Stephen King adaptations ever put on film, but did you know that over a decade before making The Shawshank Redemption, it would be Stephen King himself who helped Frank Darabont become a filmmaker? Frank would use one of Stephen King’s infamous “Dollar Babies” where King would allow aspiring filmmakers to license one of his short stories for just $1. Darabont would adapt King’s short The Woman in the Room which would be short-listed for an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short film in 1983. Despite not getting the nomination, and not even particularly liking the short, King was a fan and for $5,000, granted Darabont the rights to adapt another of his short stories: Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.
Of course, Darabont wasn’t quite ready to tackle something as massive as that story just yet, so he made a name for himself polishing up good scripts and making them great. Eventually getting around to making his first theatrical film The Shawshank Redemption and other masterpieces of the big and small screen. He is one of those talented fellas that you wish directed more films but maybe Darabont’s shorter directing resume is for a reason…. maybe the Hollywood wasn’t ready and could not tame such a wild beast of an artist? Darabont is one of the last tough guy directors, dripping with beautiful masculinity that allows his creative juices to flow. He reminds me of angry outlaw legends like Sam Peckinpah, John Ford or Willian Friedkin but is also able to capture the uplifting spirit of filmmakers like Spielberg or Capra. This cinematic warrior is of movie and TV and is not afraid to shout and scream at anyone in the way of his vision. But will his career rise up again like The Walking Dead? …Or has he broken free from the artless cages of the Hollywood system and found his real-life happy ending on a beach with Morgan Freeman? …Or will his “happy ending” be more like the end of The Mist?
But as always we must begin at the beginning and the beginning began on his birthday: January 28, 1959, in a refugee camp in France after his parents fled Hungary during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. His family settled in Los Angeles when he was five years old.
After Darabont had worked as a production assistant on such iconic films as Hell Night (1981), The Seduction (1982) and Trancers (1984), he would make his $1 Stephen King “Baby”. He then would work on writing spec screenplays including one titled Black Cat Run which he sold in 1986 but wasn’t produced until 1998 as an HBO original film. By this time, Darabont had become a decently respected writer and would team up with Hell Night and The Seduction producer Chuck Russell to write a wonderful remake of The Blob, but sometimes writing a spec script isn’t guaranteed money, so they took a gig writing A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. The film would be called a rebound for the franchise creatively and would go on to be the third highest-grossing Freddy flick. That success allowed the duo to get their Blob remake the green light which would release in 1988 and sadly be a box office bomb, grossing just over $8 million off a $10 million budget.
But Darabont was still considered a great punch-up guy and would be hired to help write the screenplay for The Fly II as well as drafts of The Rocketeer and a never made sequel to Commando. 1990 would see Darabont step behind the camera for his first feature film with the made-for-TV horror film Buried Alive which aired on the USA Network. The film received mixed reviews and was mostly forgotten about. But Darabont would continue making a name for himself with a Writer’s Guild nomination for an episode of Tales From The Crypt he wrote as well as writing several episodes of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.
In all of that time working on all these different projects, there was still that one Stephen King project he wanted to make, even though he almost didn’t make it. Rob Reiner also had some success adapting a Stephen King story into a successful film with The Body or as we better know it Stand By Me. Reiner offered Darabont $2.5 million for the chance to direct his own vision for Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption featuring Tom Cruise as Andy and Harrison Ford as Red. Even though Darabont liked Reiner’s idea for the film, he declined saying in a 2014 interview that you can defer your dreams in exchange for money and die without ever having done the thing you set out to do. But Reiner didn’t sulk, he helped mentor Darabont on the film and would help get it made by producing it through his Castle Rock Entertainment production company. King had such faith in Darabont, that he never even cashed the $5,000 check Darabont wrote him for the rights, eventually having it framed and sending it back to him with a note that said “In case you ever need bail money. Love Steve.” The film would go into pre-production in January 1993 and would eventually be released in September of 1994 where it was hailed by critics as one of the best prison-based films ever made with a lot of praise being heaped on Darabont’s script.
Yet, The Shawshank Redemption was not the runaway box office hit you may expect given how popular the film has become nearly 30 years later. It pulled in just around $73 million off a $25 million budget. But word of mouth was big, and Warner Brothers took a chance by creating hundreds of thousands of video cassette copies of the film for rental across the United States. This costly gamble paid off as The Shawshank Redemption became the biggest rental title of the year. By 1997, the film would begin airing regularly on the TNT channel where the film would garner record-breaking numbers. Of course, when talking about movies, we often discuss something called the “Oscar Bump.” Essentially when a film gets nominated for an Oscar it raises awareness for a film. Well, Shawshank certainly got more people interested in seeing what this little prison movie was about when it nabbed seven Academy Award nominations including a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination for Darabont. The film has gone on to be hailed by many as the greatest movie ever made with the Writer’s Guild of America listing Darabont’s script as the 22nd best Screenplay ever written. As we all know, Shawshank is a Drama based on a short story by Stephen King who is known for writing horror stories, it is for this reason I think the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films were confused when they nominated Shawshank Redemption for Best Screenplay at their annual Saturn Awards and do you know who Darabont had to go up against that year for that award? Himself! He was also nominated that year as a co-writer on Kenneth Branagh’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. And think about this… Shawshank was his first theatrical film to direct… his first movie was the greatest ever made… sometimes according to IMDB.
Not feeling the need to rush into anything, Darabont would wait five years before stepping behind the camera as a director again, but in the meantime he took gigs as a script doctor on such films as The Fan (1996), Eraser (1996) and Saving Private Ryan (1998). To keen-eyed viewers, you may have caught Darabont as a ghost in The Shining miniseries in 1997. That cameo came about when Darabont visited the set of the miniseries to inform Stephen King that he had decided to write and direct an adaptation of King’s other prison-based story The Green Mile. Darabont specifically specializes in Stephen King prison flicks and it’s a beautiful thing. Stephen King and Frank Darabont seem to go together like peanut butter and jelly, eggs and bacon, Taylor Swift and the NFL because The Green Mile would go on to gross nearly $300 million worldwide off a $60 million budget while garnering strong reviews that praised Darabont’s filmmaking due to how much he truly believes in the material he puts on the screen. Just as with Shawshank, awards would follow with Darabont receiving several nominations from various awards groups including two Academy Award nominations for Best Screenplay and Best Picture.
During the making of The Green Mile one of Darabont’s oldest high school friends presented him with a script he wrote titled The Bijou. Darabont absolutely loved the script, comparing it to old Frank Capra films. Darabont agreed that he would work on that film directly after finishing up Green Mile and Darabont is nothing if not a man of his word. Two years later The Bijou hit theaters, although you may know it as its retitled name: The Majestic. With Darabont’s stock on the rise due to his massive success with his Stephen King adaptations, he was given a hefty $72 million budget for this romantic drama. The film was given a prime Christmas 2001 release, but in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, audiences just didn’t seem interested in heavier dramas in theaters and the film suffered, only recouping $37.5 million of that $72 million budget while critics found the film to be overlong with forced sentimentality. Of course, if you want to know more about this film, you should check out our WTF Happened to this Movie we did on the film also written by the immensely talented (and handsome) Brad Hamerly!
Darabont is a man who takes his time with his projects, so it would be another 6 years before he stepped behind the camera to direct a film. In the meantime he would help produce the Michael Mann film Collateral while also having cameos in his friend’s films such as John Carpenter’s Vampires and Peter Jackson’s King Kong. He also wrote up the first draft to what eventually became Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and appealingly it was a pretty dang decent screenplay that Spielberg loved but Lucas was not digging so Darabont was dropped.
In 2007, Darabont would uncharacteristically work on 3 projects in a single year! First was producing and directing the pilot episode of the short-lived Jeff Goldblum starring NBC series Raines while also directing a single episode of one of the best shows of all time, that doesn’t get enough credit as being one of the best shows ever: The Shield.
The thing with Frank Darabont films is they tend to stand the test of time, even The Majestic is looked back on fondly for its classic Capra-esque vibe. But as much as The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile may be hailed as Darabont’s masterpieces, his next and to date final Stephen King collaboration is actually his best, if for no other reason than it has one of the single greatest, and most F’D up, endings in the history of the movies. The film is of course The Mist. While the film may be considered just a “creature feature” it is so much more. It delves into the psyche of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances better than any other film I can think of and when that ending hits, it becomes one of the most heartbreaking endings ever captured. And that is all a testament to Darabont’s writing and Stephen King’s trust in Darabont because that ending was completely changed from the original novel. The film received mixed reviews that leaned positive, but it seemed most critics didn’t judge the film on its own merits but instead compared it to the other Stephen King/ Frank Darabont collaborations. Luckily it found a decent enough audience in theaters to give it a near $60 million box office gross off an $18 million budget and of course, the film, and its masterful ending, have gone on to be highly respected in the years since its release. And is so much better in black and white.
Sadly, 2007’s The Mist, as of this episode, is Frank Darabont’s last theatrical movie. He has continued to do some punch-ups on screenplays such as Law Abiding Citizen and Godzilla while also appearing as himself in 2 episodes of HBO’s Entourage.
Oh wait… he did do something else, didn’t he?! That’s right, in 2010 it would be Frank Darabont who would do the leg work to get the show The Walking Dead picked up by AMC network. Darabont would shop the show to several networks before AMC picked it up and would then write and direct the show’s pilot episode, an episode many still claim as one of, if not the best episode of the entire series, scoring Darabont a Director’s Guild nomination. He would also write 4 of the 6 episodes of the series’ first season. The series was a massive hit right out the gate,
and you would think the person largely responsible for that would be rewarded. Nope, AMC decided to fire Darabont as the showrunner because they wanted to create double the number of episodes with a smaller budget. And anyone who has watched The Walking Dead knows, every season had like 2 great episodes with the rest just being absolute boring filler content. Had Darabont stuck around, I guarantee the quality of the show would not have dipped as far as it did (in my opinion, of course, the show still had its passionate fans… who are basically zombies themselves now).
Darabont didn’t take his firing lightly however, he sued AMC for $280 million saying that he never received payment for developing the show and was wrongfully terminated without warning so that AMC wouldn’t have to give him the pay raise agreed to for seasons 2 and 3 in his contract. With AMC accusing Darabont of never meeting with other directors to discuss the tone of the series, something Darabont says he 100% did, he even sent some emails to people working on the show, that uh, show the tone he was going for! In 2021 the two parties finally settled the case out of court for a reported $200 million with Darabont receiving future revenue sharing for The Walking Dead and Fear The Walking Dead.
That wouldn’t be the last time Darabont would work on TV, in 2013 he would bring the novel L.A Noir to TNT with the new title of Mob City. Darabont would write and direct 4 of the show’s 6 episodes. Unfortunately, the show was not a ratings juggernaut and was cancelled after just one season.
And sadly, that is the last work Darabont has done to date! …that was 2013. It has been about a decade since we last have been treated to anything from this great filmmaker. He was in the running to direct The Huntsman: Winter’s Game in 2016 but left the project due to creative differences. He would appear on a podcast by filmmaker Mick Garris where he said he felt beaten down by the Hollywood machine. Of course that doesn’t mean he is gone forever, in 2021 he revealed that he had written a script centred around the American Civil War that was based on an old unproduced screenplay by Stanley Kubrick. It has never materialized because apparently, the cost to produce this thing is too great for any studio, although with Apple and other streamers shelling out massive bucks for projects by big-name filmmakers, I can imagine some worse investments than to give a filmmaker of Frank Darabont’s calibre a blank check to make his triumphant return to filmmaking. But it is those little stories that make me sure that we will one day see the name Frank Darabont grace our screens again because it is obvious the passion to tell unique stories in the best possible way is still in him. And yes, even though he didn’t get to make The Walking Dead the way he wanted to, and the show certainly suffered because of that, he still got $200 million out of the deal, so it is for that reason and so many more that we say you shouldn’t worry about What Happened to Frank Darabont because Frank Darabont seems to be doing just fine!
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