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Potential Bad News For The Future Of THE WALKING DEAD

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AMC’s THE WALKING DEAD took over the world of television in the Horror genre, and has continued to dominate for quite some time. Sure the ratings aren’t as big as they once were, but the show still pulls down the top numbers. It has also carried on that feeling of we will see many more seasons and get a satisfying ending one day. As it turns out this may not be the case.

There appears to be trouble in paradise behind the scenes as we have learned that THE WALKING DEAD creator Robert Kirkman as well as series producers Gale Anne Hurd, Glen Mazzara, and David Alpert have all filed a lawsuit against AMC. The claim is that the network may have scammed them out of up to $1 billion in profits.

The complaint which was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court:

“(The complaint) 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."

See, AMC Network has to pay the studio arm of AMC for the rights to air the show. The producers are questioning the amounts being paid. The profit participation statements say that the licensing fees for episodes have ranged between $1.45 million and $2.4 million, but the producers believe that amount should be much higher.

A spokesperson for AMC had this to say of the situation:

“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."

We will continue to bring you more on this story as we hear it.