Apparently AMC does not have as much money as the rest of the networks. Despite the huge payday Netflix presented Mad Men when they bought the rights to the show exclusively, there is just not enough money to give to other AMC shows like Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead. The show runner for The Walking Dead got fired because he kept fighting for his show and more money for his show. The show runner for Breaking Bad is also in danger of getting fired because he wants more money for his show. Instead of getting more money though, the programs have had to stay the same or even lose money because Mad Men is sucking every drop of money from AMC.
This is all according to the show runner of Sons Of Anarchy who is not a big fan of the show runner of Mad Men. He says that Matthew Weiner held AMC hostage for more money and AMC finally broke down and gave it to him leaving very little for their other hit shows.
In a series of Tweets, Kurt Sutter of Sons Of Anarchy said, "why darabont got fired - weiner. he held AMC hostage, broke their bank, budgets were slashed, s**t rolled down hill onto gilligan and frank. No one else wants to f*cking say it, but the greed of mad men is killing the other two best shows on tv -- breaking bad and walking dead."
I was just telling someone that Kurt Sutter is my favorite person in the world today. Good for him for speaking the truth..he's either a crusader for a more truthful world or he's an ego maniac who thinks he'll survive the backlash he's gonna get. Whatever he is he's my hero for telling it like it is in a town full of bullshitters.
ReplyDeleteI don't watch Mad Men, but love SOA and Walking Dead. I hope they don't get thrown under the bus...
ReplyDeleteI love Mad Men but from what I've read about Matthew Weiner he sounds like a real SOB.
ReplyDeleteWell, obbbbbviously (I'm using my Antoine Dodson voice here), I think Mad Men is the greatest show on television, and I admire Matt Weiner for telling the suits at AMC to suck it when they demanded he either kill off a few cast members or increase product placement within the program -- to which I say, incidentally, WHAT THE FUCK? It's a show about advertising set in the SIXTIES. Hard to slip in a reference to Red Bull or Apple, you know?
ReplyDeleteAnd Kurt Sutter sounds as if he attended the same Internet Decorum classes as Ryan Murphy. Makes me never, ever, ever want to watch Sons of Anarchy, actually.
Matt Weiner might have a big ego, but he's also a GENIUS who doesn't tweet obnoxious shit about his showrunning comrades.
Maybe if they had written forty-five minutes of pristine perfection akin to "The Suitcase," they wouldn't be all whiny and pissy-panted right now. So, honestly, fuck 'em.
For ONCE, talent is WINNING, and I am sooooooo glad.
MM is great but so is BB and TWD. I'll be pissed if VG is fired from BB and it will ruin the show. MM isn't better than BB and I think it's BB who's had the best lead actor Emmy three years in row. I think MW is really talented and has created an impeccable and detailed reality of the 60's but I don't doubt greed can always be a factor.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what Sutter's motives are for his tweets but I like when people can be honest.
Either way it's AMC who needs to rein in it's budget and make sure all it's shows have enough to continue being great otherwise it's going to be a network who had a couple great shows and not a network you tune in to watch every pilot.
Uggghhh this sucks. I love Mad Men, but Breaking Bad is amazing. There's a reason why Bryan Cranston has won an Emmy each time he's been nominated. As much as I find Jon Hamm to be so dapper, he has nothing on Cranston.
ReplyDeleteYou know what? I'm going to shock everyone and say that Kyle Chandler should take the best actor Emmy this year. His performance as Eric Taylor was restrained, passionate, and extraordinary.
ReplyDeleteAnd I agree about Cranston -- the dude is an AMAZING actor, but Jon Hamm just inhabits Don Draper so gorgeously (in more ways than one).
I read an essay comparing Mad Men to Breaking Bad, and how similar they each are -- antihero protagonists who engage in desperate activities in order to preserve their families and identities. I wish I could find it, because it was really interesting.
The Walking Dead? Eeehhhh. Not so much. Zombies are PLAYED OUT, just like pirates and vampires, IMO.
I read Sutter's whole spiel elsewhere, and what's left out here is that he says he doesn't know Wiener, has nothing against him, it's the honchos at AMC who are to blame.
ReplyDeletedon't f- with Breaking Bad...or else!
ReplyDeletewe just left ABQ on a road trip and having BB there makes it even more popular-The Alibi had a cover story dedicated to it, Cranston bought a home there, $ is coming into that area...lots of positives beyond a truly incredible show.
Bottom line: you cannot just depend on ONE SHOW to make your network...don't put all your eggs in one basket AMC and MM can't go on forever.
The problem with this is what msgirl said - the whole rant is essentially that AMC doesn't know what they're doing.
ReplyDeletePart of the problem might be Mad Men's budget, but I doubt it. From what I remember about Mad Men's last deal, they were trying to get them to cut more cast members and trim even more off their budget. The quotes that were pulled out try to make it seem like this is like when CBS had to slash budgets from half their shows because of Charlie Sheen's deal.
The real problem is that a network will continually ask a show to cut their budget from season to season- not because they necessarily need it from their overhead, but because they want to maximize their profits.
Somewhere out there, I was reading a story about the firing of the showrunner for Walking Dead where they were asking him to use fewer zombies. Since you know, that makes a lot of sense on a show about zombies.
Bottom line, this isn't Weiner's fault for trying to make his show be the best it is- it's AMC that doesn't know what the hell they're doing.
AMC is being cheap. They don't want to increase budgets, even though they're asking shows to make more episodes. For example, TWD is supposed to increase to 10-13 eps, but do so on the same budget they got for S1--which has half the number of eps. Darabont basically said EFF THIS and gets fired for wanting to put out good product.
ReplyDeleteMM was postponed already. And since it's AMC's most mainstream show, they don't want to upset that cart too much. So they try to pinch their 'niche' shows. That's not fair. All of the shows are good.
But the problem is all of the shows are expensive. VERY expensive. MM's wardrobe and large cast, TWD's extras and zombie makeup--none of that comes free.
But AMC can't sacrifice their entire lineup for one show. MM may be great, but that's a bad business model to follow. And if AMC isn't careful, it goes back into cable oblivion and no one will care.
Love the walking dead, if you think it is just about zombies than you should really watch it. It is much more than that and the acting is splendid. I don't see how they can cut too much from it, but whatever. If you are going to put out a show and expect it do do well, you need to plan for the future of the show by budgeting more money.
ReplyDelete1. Let's face it, MAD MEN put AMC on the fucking MAP. The other shows wouldn't have happened without Mad Men.
ReplyDelete2. Kurt Sutter is a loose cannon. Dude's crazy. Not 100 percent certain he's a reliable source. Oh, in his own mind, I'm sure he's calling it straight, but he's got a filter that distorts. Also, he defends that arrogant prick Ryan Murphy, so I gotta throw side eye Kurt Sutter's way. Also, his show is on F/X, so why is AMC's business his business?
3. That said, Kurt Sutter's tweets are some of the most entertaining tweets around.
4. Matthew Weiner is a bona fide prima donna arrogant d-bag, no doubt about it. Thing is, he also fucking BRINGS it creatively, so he's earned the right to make financial demands for his show. See point #1. He put AMC on the map, the other shows wouldn't exist had Mad Men not paved the golden brick road. Truth.
I love Mad Men & The Walking Dead. I'm just falling in love Breaking Bad. I hope all three shows can make it. AMC don't ruin it.
ReplyDelete@Little Miss -- preach it, sister!
ReplyDeleteAs someone who believes in GOOD TELEVISION, since God knows they stopped making good movies a long time ago, PLEASE DON'T TAKE AWAY BREAKING BAD!!!
ReplyDeleteThey are putting all of their eggs in one basket. Remember when ABC had Who Wants to Be a Millionaire on every night of the week? HUGE mistake, and when the trend waned, nobody was watching. That person got fired.
ReplyDeleteIf (GOD FORBID) anything happens to Jon Hamm (again, GOD FORBID), what are they going to do?
And one last thing -- isn't it show runners' jobs to get more money for their shows? How would that get them fired?
ReplyDeleteKurt Sutter has always been a big mouth.
ReplyDeleteWhatever Matt Weiner is and has done, he's a talented guy and a network executive should be smart enough to handle both Mad Men and Breaking Bad.
I guess it's more likely that Vince Gilligan either wanted to close his show after season 5 or that he asked for terms similar to Weiner and that AMC wasn't happy wit it.
And, for the record...
- The Walking Dead had an amazing pilot but went downhill from there.
- The Killing is a generic procedural show masquerading as high art and should be requalified as comedy, given the awful and pretentious writing.
AMC isn't responsible for their two or three hits. Their show runners are, because they had a vision and dealt with a clueless network that was willing to experiment. But their latest shows aren't that great.
I never really got into Mad Men, but Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead are both fucking phenomenal shows. For the sake of clarity, as BigMama pointed out, TWD isn’t a show about zombies, but rather a show trying to survive when face with hopelessness, and how living human beings can be a worse enemy than the undead. The title of the show refers to the living rather than the dead.
ReplyDelete@Ida, I agree that Kyle Chandler should win for Friday Night Lights—he, and many others in the cast, should have won years ago.
Vince Gilligan is a freaking genius. I love Breaking Bad. I also love Mad Men. I couldn't get into the zombie show. I believe that Breaking Bad will end after season 7 per Gilligan's wishes.
ReplyDeleteThis is probably why Breaking Bad started its season 4 so late. I love Breaking Bad. Can they be picked up by another network with more money?
ReplyDeleteI feel as if I need to clarify my thoughts about The Walking Dead. :-)
ReplyDeleteI don't think it's just some dumb show about zombies -- the first couple of episodes were pretty enthralling, but I am just NOT a fan of gore -- and gore is everywhere in that show, obviously, given how and what zombies eat. I have a hard time with True Blood and Tarantino flicks, too -- I'm a sensitive soul, and it's difficult for me to handle extreme violence is all.
Mad Men only has ONE gory scene -- but, frankly, it's hilarious. It involves a John Deere. I won't spoil it if there are people reading CDAN who are just now getting into MM, but it's definitely bloody.
And I just CANNOT fathom AMC ditching Breaking Bad. It might not attract tons of viewers, but it's got a passionate following and critics adore it. I think it'll end around season seven or eight -- just like Mad Men -- which is a perfect timeline for a well-written drama. After a certain point, there's some shark-jumping going on when shows last past their prime, and I think Weiner and Gilligan are smart enough to realize that.
Little Miss, it shocks me that he likes Ryan Murphy after that rant he went on about how nobody deserves an Emmy nom as much as Anarchy, and he singled out Glee in particular as being unworthy. Yeah, Anarchy is really good, but it's not better than Breaking Bad, or Mad Men, or FNL...
ReplyDeleteI'm a lot more pissed that SyFy dropped season 6 of Eureka just to save some cash. :(
What is a show runner? That's a new one for me.
ReplyDeleteI too am a big fan of MM and BB although this season is a bit of a dud so far. I've never seen WD.
Can't AMC sell syndication rights or something else to raise $$$?
None of the shows need as much money as they think they do. Suck it up and prioritize your budgets like everyone else in this economy, whiners. They should trade places for one day with indie filmmakers. That would stop the bitching.
ReplyDelete@Sasha: I actually tried to wipe that damned bug off my monitor screen before realizing what it was!
ReplyDeleteI love me some Mad Men, but sounds like bad business dealings to me.
ReplyDeleteIMO Mad Men & Breaking Bad are the only shows worth watching on AMC, other than that I don't really watch anything else on AMC, and a Biker Melodrama of Sons of Anarchy is so boring.
ReplyDeleteWhaddya know, Kurt Sutter pulled the plug on @sutterink.
ReplyDeletehttp://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2011/08/14/the-rise-and-fall-of-sutterink-showrunners-off-twitter-iii/