Frank Darabont Backs Away From Part of His ‘The Walking Dead’ Lawsuit

Frank Darabont, who developed The Walking Dead as original showrunner, has put a pause to part of his hefty $270-something million lawsuit against series producers AMC, THR reports.

Darabont and reps Creative Artists Agency have maintained a five-year lawsuit against the network over profits owed from the series. Yesterday, Darabont's attorney informed a New York judge of a deal with AMC that will see Darabont back off from litigating a claim that he deserves the same kind of accounting treatment provided to The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman.

"The parties have agreed not to litigate the Kirkman [Most Favored Nation] Claims in this action, and have entered into a tolling agreement to preserve the status quo as to Plaintiffs' Kirkman MFN Claims," Darabont's lawyer, Jerry Bernstein, wrote in a statement to New York Supreme Court Justice Eileen Bransten.

The update means Darabount could resume the claim at a later date, depending on the decision made in his first case and Kirkman's own lawsuit against AMC.

Darabont and his agents filed suit in 2013 claiming they were denied their rightful share of profits generated by The Walking Dead. Darabont and his camp claim AMC, by way of creative accounting, made the hit series seem less valuable than it actually is as a means of cutting him out of profits he's contractually owed.

The Shawshank Redemption filmmaker says he has "self-dealing protection in his contract that mandates that the imputed license fee that AMC uses should reflect an arms' length transactions between the company's affiliates."

After Kirkman and producers Gale Anne Hurd, Glen Mazzara, and David Alpert filed their own suit against AMC for upwards of $1 billion last summer, Darabont's lawyers discovered Kirkman's deal had self-dealing protection, but with one difference: there, AMC is required to use an actual license fee instead of the imputed license fee, here an 'invisible' fee that a network would otherwise pay to a studio for rights to air a show.

Darabont and CAA maintain that $30 million would be the fair market value for an imputed license fee instead of the existing $2.4 million per episode.

Because Darabont had a 'most favored nations' provision in his contract, a second lawsuit was filed in January seeking a declaratory judgement that Darabont was entitled to the better of the two deals.

In January, the lawsuit against AMC said it was clear that "AMC's wrongful conduct extends well beyond artificially deflated license fees," and that in addition to "withholding hundreds of millions of dollars from the creators," AMC "used a variety of shady accounting practices... to withhold tens of millions more."

Despite a strong performance by The Walking Dead's first season in 2010 — a season that set a viewership record for basic cable — AMC slashed the budget for Season Two, adding to Darabont's growing tensions with the network. He was later fired and replaced by Glen Mazzara, who operated as showrunner until he was replaced by Scott Gimple for Season Four onwards.

The Walking Dead launches its ninth season Sunday, October 7 on AMC.