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Now 'The Walking Dead' creator and producers are suing AMC
They claim they've kept the "lion's share" of profits
By Andrew Trendell
'The Walking Dead' returns very soon
The creator and producers of 'The Walking Dead' are now suing AMC for potentially billions , claiming they've kept "the lion's share" of profits made by the hit show.
The latest drama and controversy comes after a former show-runner slammed AMC for "fucking up my show" in a series of damning emails.
Now, a lawsuit filed yesterday at Los Angeles Superior Court shows that show creator Robert Kirkman along with producers Gale Anne Hurd, Glen Mazzara and David Alpert are suing AMC for a string of charges, including breaching their contract.
The walkers will inherit the Earth
"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," the lawsuit reads.
"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."
They added that despite the show's runaway success and being the highest rated show, they did not see a fair share of profits as made by the likes of 'Mad Men' and 'Breaking Bad'.
"While AMC Network previously aired such popular shows as Mad Men and Breaking Bad, the ratings of TWD – and the revenues that accompanied those ratings – have far exceeded the ratings and revenues from those series, and have catapulted AMC Parent, and its financial value to a whole new level," they continued.
"But while the AMC Parent has been richly rewarded for the success of TWD (and from Fear the Walking Dead ("FTWD"), and the Talking Dead ("TTD"), both of which are also subjects of this lawsuit), AMC has used its vertically-integrated corporate structure to avoid sharing that financial success with the profit participants, including the Plaintiffs who wrote, created and produced these programs."
Responding to the suit and assuring fans of the show's future, an AMC spokesman told Rolling Stone: "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."
The eighth season of the hit AMC show will return to screens in October, with a confirmed premiere date of October 23 in the UK on FOX – 24 hours after the season premiere airs in the US.