Originally published August 15, 2017. Updated November 30, 2022.
The producers of The Walking Dead have filed a lawsuit against AMC.
The Walking Dead is still one of the most popular shows on television, and has been the flagship series for its network AMC for a number of years.
However, yet another lawsuit has been filed against the network, following on from the nasty dispute between them and the series’ original showrunner, Frank Darabont.
This new suit comes from five of the series’ current producers, including co-creator of TWD Robert Kirkman.
In what could be the biggest profits case in television history, the producers have alleged that they have been massively cheated by AMC. This particular case is even more damaging to AMC as those involved continue to work on the series, and are vital to the show’s future.
“This case arises from a major entertainment conglomerate’s failure to honor its contractual obligations to the creative people — the ‘talent,’ in industry jargon — behind the wildly successful, and hugely profitable, long-running television series The Walking Dead,” begins the complaint filed Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court. “The defendant AMC Entities exploited their vertically integrated corporate structure to combine both the production and the exhibition of TWD, which allowed AMC to keep the lion’s share of the series’ enormous profits for itself and not share it with the Plaintiffs, as required by their contracts.”
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You can read the full complaint here. The claims are: breach of contract, tortious interference and unfair or fraudulent business acts under California business code.
Responding to the lawsuit, an AMC spokesperson has said, “These kinds of lawsuits are fairly common in entertainment and they all have one thing in common — they follow success. Virtually every studio that has had a successful show has been the target of litigation like this, and The Walking Dead has been the No. 1 show on television for five years in a row, so this is no surprise. We have enormous respect and appreciation for these plaintiffs, and we will continue to work with them as partners, even as we vigorously defend against this baseless and predictably opportunistic lawsuit.”
It certainly not been a good time for AMC, and from the sounds of it they have a lot to answer for. At the very least, it doesn’t help their reputation with the talent they will be seeking to attract.
