AMC is facing a wold-ending lawsuit for their hit apocalypse show “The Walking Dead,” as creatives behind the series are looking to collect damages up to $1 billion for being cheated by the television network.
“The Walking Dead” co-creator Robert Kirkman and series producers Gale Anne Hurd, Glen Mazzara and David Alpert filed the suit against AMC on Monday that could end up being the highest profit case in the history of television, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The show’s creatives are claiming breach of contract, tortious interference and unfair or fraudulent business acts against AMC.
Frank Darabont, the show’s other co-creator, was fired as executive producer during the second season and has reached the summary judgement phase of his own lawsuit against AMC to the tune of $280 million. The new lawsuit could cause more of a problem though, (not to mention a lot more money) as these creatives are still involved with the series.
“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 new complaint 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.”
The network wasn’t surprised by the lawsuit from “The Walking Dead” creatives and despite the massive amount of money it could cost them, kept it cordial with their response.
“These kinds of lawsuits are fairly common in entertainment and they all have one thing in common–they follow success,” an AMC spokesperson said in response. “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.”