Some new poor bastard has been hired to run The Walking Dead for now
In a job that's increasingly the TV equivalent of being named new Lord Chancellor under Henry VIII, AMC has named the new showrunner for The Walking Dead—its third in as many seasons, after the recent parting of ways with Glen Mazzara. It's Scott Gimple, Mazzara's apparent No. 2 and an executive producer who's been with the show since the second season, delighting the crew with the way his name conjures up a whimsical forest creature who engages in ritual S&M. That kind of joking around is likely verboten now that Gimple is firmly in charge, for now, with him scheduled to take over production at the start of season four. Gimple's tenure on the show includes writing the episodes "Save The Last One" and "Pretty Much Dead Already" (two of the biggest turning points of the mostly inert second season), while his non-Walking Dead credits include work on Simpsons comic books and creating the cartoon series Fillmore!, writing for short-lived series such as FlashForward, Life, Drive, and Chase, plus a co-screenwriting credit on Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance, suggesting AMC may have finally found the just-happy-to-be-here showrunner it's been looking for all this time.