Frank Darabont

Frank Darabont (born January 28, 1959) is an American filmmaker, screenwriter, and producer who was born in Montbéliard, France, to Hungarian parents. His family emigrated to the United States when he was an infant, and he grew up in Chicago before moving to Los Angeles. He attended Hollywood High School and began working in film as a production assistant. Darabont wrote early screenplays for A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), The Blob (1988), and The Fly II (1989). His long-standing connection with Stephen King began with the short film The Woman in the Room (1983), adapted from King’s story. He subsequently made some of the most prominent screen adaptations of King’s fiction. His first feature as director, The Shawshank Redemption (1994), adapted from Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, starred Tim Robbins as banker Andy Dufresne and Morgan Freeman as inmate Ellis “Red” Redding. The film initially performed modestly at the box office but became a major home-video and television success. It received seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and a screenplay nomination for Darabont. Darabont followed it with The Green Mile (1999), another King adaptation, set on a Depression-era death row. Tom Hanks played prison officer Paul Edgecomb, while Michael Clarke Duncan portrayed John Coffey, a condemned man with extraordinary healing abilities. The film earned four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Supporting Actor for Duncan. In The Majestic (2001), Jim Carrey played a blacklisted screenwriter who loses his memory and is mistaken for a missing local war hero. Darabont returned to King with The Mist (2007), whose bleak ending differs sharply from the novella’s conclusion. He also developed AMC’s The Walking Dead for television, wrote and directed its 2010 pilot, “Days Gone Bye,” and served as the series’ initial showrunner. The pilot introduced sheriff Rick Grimes, played by Andrew Lincoln, awakening from a coma into a zombie-infested Georgia. Darabont departed the production during its second season in 2011. He later created the TNT crime drama Mob City (2013), based on John Buntin’s book L.A. Noir, about postwar Los Angeles police, gangsters, and the conflict involving officer Joe Teague and mobster Mickey Cohen. Darabont wrote the screenplay for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994), directed by Kenneth Branagh and starring Branagh, Robert De Niro, Helena Bonham Carter, Tom Hulce, and Aidan Quinn. His directing career remains closely associated with King’s work, and he has written multiple King adaptations for cinema.