AMC finally brought an end to more than a decade of profit participation lawsuits for "The Walking Dead." Lost in the holiday weekend, AMC settled its profit participation lawsuit with “The Walking Dead” creator Robert Kirkman and the zombie franchise’s producers Glen Mazzara, David Alpert, Charles Eglee and Gale Anne Hurd.
The lawsuit, which was first filed in 2017, was over the profits allegedly entitled to the quintet stemming from the original “Walking Dead” mega-hit, its first spinoff “Fear the Walking Dead” and its aftershow, “Talking Dead.” AMC agreed to settle for $120 million to resolve the lawsuit — $85 million this month and another $35 million next year.
The Labor Day weekend settlement brought a quiet end to what had been one of the longest running and most high profile lawsuits over profit participation (shout out to everyone who remembers the “Bones” profit lawsuit). Over a 13-year period that began in 2013 — only three years after “The Walking Dead” became one of the biggest hits in cable TV history — AMC was the defendant in two separate lawsuits over profits from the zombie franchise.
In 2013, Frank Darabont and CAA sued AMC over profits after he was fired early in production of the show’s second season. Darabont developed the series that was based on Kirkman’s comic books and ran the first season. The suit claimed that Darabont was wrongfully fired from the series, and that he was entitled to proceeds from the show for that season. The two filed a second lawsuit in 2018 over additional profits they say were withheld from Darabont.
(Darabont also accused AMC, which produced and aired the series, of striking an agreement in which the network would be “selling” the show to itself, leading to “the improper and abusive practice of self-dealing.” The WGA’s push to boycott agencies in 2018 amid a dispute over the practice of “packaging fees” was also caught in the tangled legal mess, in which AMC tried to use the conflict to divide Darabont and CAA.)
In 2017, the Kirkman-led group sued AMC, alleging that the supposed “self-dealing” ended up shortchanging them on the profits as well.
After AMC settled with Darabont and CAA, it tried, and failed, to get the other lawsuit thrown out — the reason ironically being that because they settled with Darabont, the Most Favored Nations clause meant that Kirkman and co. were entitled to a similar outcome.
That outcome finally happened last weekend. In the end, AMC had to pony up an extra $320 million to settle its profit affairs. It has the money – the zombie hit recently renewed its licensing deal with Netflix for $500 million.
