For the past few years, AMC has been embroiled in a lawsuit with The Walking Dead’s ex-showrunner Frank Darabont, and now the cable network has another legal battle on its hands, this time concerning the companion series Fear the Walking Dead.
Deadline is reporting that Mel Smith, creator of the comic book Dead Ahead, has filed suit against AMC, Robert Kirkman’s Skybound Entertainment, Gale Anne Hurd’s Valhalla Entertainment and executive producer David Alpert over the second season of Fear the Walking Dead.
“Within the last three years, defendants, and each of them, infringed plaintiff’s copyright in Dead Ahead by, among other things, broadcasting or otherwise exploiting the second season of Fear the Walking Dead,” reads the complaint. “Portions of that season’s 13 episodes were copied from plaintiff’s copyrighted literary work Dead Ahead.”
The Image Comics release follows a group of survivors who find themselves trapped at sea on a floating prison as a zombie apocalypse hits the world. A large portion of Fear the Walking Dead season two was also set at sea.
Coincidence perhaps, although Smith states that Kirkman and Alpert used to be “his “agent representative for the purposes of consulting with motion picture and television studios on the use or exploitation of Dead Ahead [and that] defendant Alpert violated and continues to violate his fiduciary obligation to plaintiff by engaging in a pattern and practice of self-dealing, placing his own interests ahead of the interests of his principal and client, wrongfully depriving plaintiff income from the use and exploitation of Dead Ahead, including the ideas embodied therein, and using his principal’s and client’s intellectual property to enrich himself.”
As yet, there has been no response from AMC or any of the other parties.
