New Players In AMC-Darabont Legal Battle
The Walking Dead | Photo Credit AMC For the past few years, the original The Walking Dead showrunner, Frank Darabont, has been in legal battles with AMC over the zombie series. Now, Robert Kirkman, Gale Anne Hurd, Glenn Mazzara, and David Alpert have joined the lawsuit, which may end up reaching $1 billion in damages.
This could be the biggest profits case in television history, especially since The Walking Dead could soon extend to twenty seasons. This court case is going to be important for future cases, so it’s likely that everyone in Hollywood is going to pay close attention to the verdict.
It all began with Frank Darabont was fired from the series he helped develop.
Beginning With $280 Million…
Frank Darabont | Photo Credit Den of Geek
The Hollywood Reporter writes:
“The new case follows the one from Frank Darabont, the show’s other co-creator, who was fired as executive producer in the middle of the second season and is demanding $280 million in an accounting lawsuit that has reached the summary judgment phase.”
“Now, the other key creatives on the series are targeting significant damages of their own. With the participation of Kirkman, whose comic books served as source material for Walking Dead, and Hurd and Alpert, who continue to work on the series, AMC finds itself in court against those whose ongoing involvement is crucial to Walking Dead‘s and perhaps AMC’s future.”
Official Document For Court Case
The Walking Dead | Photo Credit AMC
The complaint reads:
“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 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.”
What do you think about this record-breaking court case?
