Walking Dead Creator Robert Kirkman’s Profit Lawsuit Against AMC Suffers Latest Blow

The Walking Dead profits lawsuit has suffered what an attorney called a “decisive blow” against claims AMC Networks cheated producers out of profits from the blockbuster zombie drama. In 2017, comic book creator and series executive producer Robert Kirkman filed suit against AMC claiming breach of contract with EP Gale Ann Hurd, EP David Alpert, and former showrunner and EP Glen Mazzara, alleging AMC failed to honor its contractual obligations to the creative team. The complaint accused AMC Studios and AMC Network of “skimming” and self-dealing to misrepresent profits, thereby cheating the producers of their fair share.

“Based upon the facts and evidence before the Court, the Court finds no triable issues of material fact as to Plaintiffs’ first cause of action for breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing,” LA Superior Court Judge Daniel Buckley ruled Wednesday (via Deadline). “Accordingly, summary adjudication is GRANTED as to the first cause of action.”

In response to the producers’ revised lawsuit in May 2021 arguing AMCN breached the “implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing” by misrepresenting the profitability of the flagship series of its TWD Universe, Buckley wrote Wednesday, “The Court agrees with Defendants that none of these categories of evidence are sufficient to raise a triable issue of fact that Defendants deprived Plaintiffs of the benefit of their bargain or acted arbitrarily, irrationally, or malevolently such that a reasonable jury could find their conduct breached of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing.” 

“Today’s ruling is a decisive blow to this overreaching case,” said AMC attorney Orin Snyder. “This is the second time the court has thrown out the plaintiffs’ main claims, and rejected their attempt to rewrite their contracts in search of an unjustified windfall. We are pleased with the court’s ruling, which leaves only narrow audit claims to be resolved at trial, where we are confident we will prevail.”

Reads the original complaint from 2017, “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 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. Plaintiffs and the other talent behind TWD are the ones whose work to create, develop, write and produce the series has brought its huge success, but the fruits of that success have not been shared as they should be.” 

Responding to the filing, AMC said in a statement at the time: “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 #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.” 

The final eight episodes of The Walking Dead premiere later in 2022 on AMC and AMC+. Spinoffs in the works at AMC Networks include episodic anthology Tales of the Walking Dead, premiering this summer, the untitled Daryl/Carol spinoff starring Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride, and Lauren Cohan and Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Isle of the Dead, airing in 2023. 

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