Both Major Walking Dead Trials Hit Coronavirus Delays
Both of the multi-million dollar lawsuits against AMC over The Walking Dead profits have been delayed due to the Coronavirus crisis.
With one major lawsuit pending a significant judgement and another major lawsuit about to see the courtroom, the Walking Dead/AMC legal drama was thrown for a loop this week as the Coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis has caused considerable delays in both trials.
However, while Frank Darabont and his talent agency, Creative Artist Agency (CAA), will have to wait at least half a year (and probably longer) to see their lawsuit against AMC get to court, they did receive some good news when a New York state judge ruled against the Dolan family (who own AMC) in its attempt to dismiss part of Darabont and CAA's case.
Darabont's lawsuit was filed all the way back in 2013 and there has been a number of legal gamesmanship over the years before the two sides finally seemed to be heading to court in late May. Instead, Justice Joel Cohen has ruled that the new court date will be November 2, 2020. However, that new date is clearly an optimistic one in and of itself and it seems more likely that the Coronavirus crisis will push the trial again in the future. Therefore, it is probable that this case won't go to court until 2021.
Darabont and CAA's lawsuit is centered on the fact that The Walking Dead, unlike AMC's earlier hit series, Breaking Bad and Mad Men, was produced by the network itself rather than by an outside studio. As a result, there is some dispute over how the network handled profits when, in effect, dealing with itself as the self-licensor of the series. In other words, AMC doesn't literally pay itself to produce The Walking Dead; the studio instead put money into a pool using a formula to determine the "imputed license fee," that is, the fee that they would be paying an outside studio. As the show's creator, Darabont and CAA (via their deal with Darabont) would get a share of the show's profits, which would be derived from that pool. The concern, of course, is whether AMC was putting a fair market rate for the show into that pool, or if it was low balling the imputed license fee so that it would have to pay less to Darabont. Since Darabont and CAA are suing for nearly $300 million, it is clear that they think that AMC put in a lot less than they should have.
One of the major disputes is also over Modified Adjusted Gross Receipts (MAGR), which is how the network calculates exactly how much the show made. Darabont and CAA actually filed a second lawsuit in January 2018 alleging that AMC was unfairly manipulating the MAGR. Justice Cohen dismissed AMC's attempts to receive summary judgment on that secondary aspect of the trial.
Meanwhile, Robert Kirkman and fellow producers Glen Mazzara, Gale Anne Hurd and David Alpert filed a similar lawsuit against AMC in 2017 in California. That went to trial on some of the early aspects of the case in February. It ended in March and were awaiting a ruling from the judge in the non-jury trial, but the same Coronavirus delays affecting Darabont's case will likely effect Kirkman's case, as well.
We might not know who came out ahead in this legal drama until 2021.
Via Deadline.
CBR Senior Writer Brian Cronin has been writing professionally about comic books for over fifteen years now at CBR (primarily with his “Comics Should Be Good” series of columns, including Comic Book Legends Revealed). He has written two books about comics for Penguin-Random House – Was Superman a Spy? And Other Comic Book Legends Revealed and Why Does Batman Carry Shark Repellent? And Other Amazing Comic Book Trivia! and one book, 100 Things X-Men Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die, from Triumph Books. His writing has been featured at ESPN.com, the Los Angeles Times, About.com, the Huffington Post and Gizmodo. He features legends about entertainment and sports at his website, Legends Revealed and other pop culture features at Pop Culture References. Follow him on Twitter at @Brian_Cronin and feel free to e-mail him suggestions for stories about comic books that you'd like to see featured at brianc@cbr.com!
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