Frank Darabont, the former showrunner for The Walking Dead, has filed another lawsuit against AMC. This time for $10 million.
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He, and CAA, first took the network to court over four years ago with claims that it did not fairly share profits with him after his departure. At the time, the claim was that the amount of profits kept from Darabont had reached $280 million.
The 27-page court documents filed in the New York Supreme Court show that Darabont and his team found more wrongdoing.
“Having recently completed its audit of AMC’s accounting records, it is now clear that AMC’s wrongful conduct extends well beyond artificially deflated license fees,” the documents read.
Additionally, the claim reads:
“In addition to withholding hundreds of millions of dollars from the creators of the hit television series The Walking Dead through improper self-dealing, which is the subject of litigation between the parties currently pending in this court, AMC has used a variety of shady accounting practices, described below, to withhold tens of millions more,” the jury-seeking filing adds, before settling in for the kicker. “And, Plaintiffs recently learned that AMC attempted to hide evidence related to its self-dealing from Plaintiffs during discovery in the pending litigation.”
Darabont had been credited as the co-creator and acted as showrunner of The Walking Dead through its first six-episode season but was fired from the production at the midpoint of the second season.
Following his departure from the program, AMC licensed the series to its cable affiliate network for an amount of money which Darabont and his team have claimed was not enough.
AMC has argued that it negotiated the legal right to set an imputed licensing fee.
Darabont has maintained that his contract entitled him to as much as 10 percent of certain The Walking Dead profits after deductions.
At the time of the first lawsuit, AMC released a statement that read: “Plaintiffs’ damages claim has no basis in reality and we will continue to vigorously defend against this lawsuit.”
AMC did not return request for comment on the new suit at the time of publication of this article.
One damning statement in the documents was highlighted by the CAA team saying it determined it was legally appropriate to add the additional funds due to a heavily redacted section in the contract of co-creator, Robert Kirkman.
“AMC improperly and egregiously redacted Kirkman’s agreement when it was produced to Plaintiffs in discovery in the prior pending action,” the documents read.
It continued, “AMC produced Kirkman’s agreement to Plaintiffs in discovery in the underlying action but redacted the very self-dealing provision at issue, even after agreeing with Plaintiffs that AMC would not redact anything relevant to Kirkman’s profit definition.
“But the truth has now come out, exposing AMC’s bad faith accounting and its bad faith litigation tactics.”
It is expected that this new dollar amount will be folded into the initial lawsuit which, baring an out-of-court settlement, will be heard in New York.
