'The Walking Dead' Trial Gets 2020 Court Date

The long-running feud between Frank Darabont and AMC's The Walking Dead will be settled in court [...]

By Brandon Davis

The long-running feud between Frank Darabont and AMC's The Walking Dead will be settled in court in May of 2020.

The suit which was filed five years ago will have to wait one more as The Walking Dead's original showrunner and Creative Artists Agency are suing the network with a court date finally set for next year.

"On Tuesday, at a status conference, the parties learned that the huge profits case with more than $300 million on the line will head to trial in May 2020," THR reports. "This comes after New York Supreme Court Justice Eileen Bransten largely denied summary judgment motions in December. Neither side is appealing. A jury will thus be deciding whether AMC has to impute a fair-market value for the highly-rated series or whether Darabont and his reps allowed AMC to set the amount with certain limitations."

Justice Joel Cohen will be overseeing the trial, having taken over the case after Bransten retired at the end of 2018.

At the same time, AMC is also facing a lawsuit with its The Walking Dead spinoff series Fear the Walking Dead. A recent attempt to get the sibling lawsuit dismissed was rejected. In this case, Dead Ahead author Mel Smith claims Fear the Walking Dead ripped off the story of his comic book series. AMC admitted to having access to the comic but denies any copyright infringements or plagiarism.

AMC attempted to dismiss the Fear the Walking Dead and Dead Ahead lawsuit, claiming that once you take away "the generic elements from the zombie genre", "there wasn't enough substantial similarity in any protectable elements." This then puts Fear the Walking Dead and any shows or movies of the zombie type in the same genre, meaning they are not copying one another but using a similar, basic world-building mythology.

The Walking Dead TV series returns for the back half of its ninth season on February 10, 2019 at 9 pm ET. Fear the Walking Dead will return for its fifth season in 2019. For complete coverage and insider info all year long, follow @BrandonDavisBD on Twitter and watch ComicBook.com's After The Dead each Sunday night following new episodes.

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