What you say about AMC wanting to make international TWD shows with local production companies makes me feel like AMC are going to drag TWD franchise along with them like an empty tin can on a long, fraying string. It feels like they can’t make TWDU turn a profit for them anymore because they aren’t capable of/willing to invest in good writing. But they also won’t give it up to anyone who can do that. So, they’re just going to hang on to it indefinitely, squeezing minimum profit and minimum audience engagement from it.
So, if our best hopes are with a different studio taking over, does that mean endless waiting and it probably never happening? I don’t really know what to hope for now.
I'm limited in what I can and cannot say about this show, but it's my belief that a different studio would serve the story better. That's not to say that AMC couldn't make it—McDermott wants to work with this showrunner on original content and the studio needs someone who can plot. They're hoping The Audacity will find an audience in S2, but that's pure desperation talking.
AMC's decline isn't like watching grass grow or paint dry, if that's what you're asking. They need to invest in good writing, whether it's Caryl or something else.
Wait so Kristen Dolan is the one who is giving instructions for AMC to target a young male audience?
I’m not the anon who asked about an email campaign. I don’t know what that is. But I saw that you said the decision to target a young male audience is coming from higher up than Dan McDermott. So, Kristen Dolan?
It reflects the stance of the larger Dolan family conglomerate, but this specific decision predates Kristin's tenure as CEO.
AMC Networks fell short of Wall Street analysts' forecasts in the first quarter, reflecting ongoing pressure on advertising and distribution
I can't even remember how long AMC has offered "a downturn in linear ratings and a challenging ad market" as an explanation for their losses. Yes, traditional broadcast and cable are in decline, but they need higher quality shows.
The TWD franchise, which is the bulk of AMC's portfolio, is old. The shows within the 'universe' need to differentiate from each other—every premise can't be about a family member getting kidnapped, but most of all, they need to find renewed appeal to the audience. I assumed the fast variant and les brûlants were an attempt at a new hook, but getting bogged down in quasi-science won't attract much other than heckling.
AMC has committed to the horror space and they can diversify their TWDU offerings with different elements of the genre. The audience will never have that visceral reaction to walkers again that the first few seasons offered. The mutated walker in season 1 of Dead City was mainly interesting from an FX standpoint and a disinterested "that's gross"—there were no stakes because our heroes have plot armor and everyone else is a red shirt.
Horror should induce some kind of feeling of disquiet. There should be a sense of foreboding.
DC should capitalize on Maggie and Negan's antagonism, but the conceit isn't moving anywhere. There are a lot of hard stares which quickly feel irrelevant and some fans have turned it into a ship because the relationship has stagnated. The audience should have a palpable fear that they will eventually harm each other as the tension escalates. They are both trying to move on: him from being his worst self and her from the worst thing that happened to her. The emotional arc needs to center on that potential loss of their humanity. They are the protagonist in their own arc and the antagonist in in the other's—that framing would be different from what we've already seen on TWD.
I don't even know where to start with Caryl... Trying to find a boat that sails across the Atlantic isn't horror and neither is the debate on whether or not Laurent is a Messiah. (If it's to be religious horror, we need some sort of spiritual evil and the characters in season 1 are simply self-serving.) S1 of Daryl Dixon felt like it didn't have any interest in being a horror show beyond a half-hearted attempt at the bare minimum: the required walkers are thrown into the mix like an almost-afterthought.
Caryl are at the opposite end of the spectrum from Maggie and Negan. They work exceptionally well together and that's part of the draw for the audience, but add an element of the Uncanny, like in FROM:
In a nightmarish town in Middle America that traps those who enter, unwilling residents strive to stay alive and search for a way out, plagued by terrifying nocturnal creatures from the surrounding forest and secrets hidden in the town.
It would present Caryl with a new challenge. Something different. The GA would have a mystery to ponder and Caryl fans could enjoy watching Caryl work on a new sort of problem together. Something they haven't faced before and something that has them stumped. It would lend itself to an emotional arc where they can come to terms with their mutual feelings of inadequacy, because they can see how well they function together when everything else is a challenge.
The key to growing the audience for either of these shows is to transform the concept into something that's attractive in today's market, not a 15-year old formula. AMC needs to set the franchise apart from TLoU too because they suffer from the comparison.
We as an audience are desensitized to body horror—blood and guts have become gratuitous gimmicks that try to cover up that there isn't much of a story. Good horror relies on ambiance, much like S2 of TWD. Fear of the unknown. A creeping sense of dread. That's why viewers (and Norman!) loved the farm arc of the flagship show.
AMC is cash poor because they don't invest in the writing. Their business model (basic cable) is dying, but they're staring too hard at "new technologies." If the studio told good stories, people would subscribe to their streaming service. Distilling the audience into niches of TWD's viewership by focusing the spinoffs on a couple of characters requires AMC to find fresh angles so new viewers will discover these shows. The studio spends too much money on theatrics and not enough on the nuts and bolts of what makes a TV show good: its writing.
David Zabel has no experience writing horror and it's evident from viewing S1 that he clearly has no interest in it. His original characters are dollar store versions of the Roy family in Succession: manipulative and self-absorbed. For horror to be effective, the audience has to care and we don't. (We're mainly waiting for them to die, because that's the TWD brand: raze and burn with no one left alive in the wake of our heroes.) Zabel's an old school network writer who hasn't worked consistently in the last decade, which I assume means AMC got him at a bargain bin price.
I want to feel excitement at TBOC, but I mostly feel dread. That's the real horror show.
