AMC has won a significant legal victory in the trial concerning a dispute over the profits from the Walking Dead TV series, with a Los Angeles judge ruling that the disputed contracts at issue in the lawsuit had been correctly interpreted by the cable channel based on the terms agreed to in the deals and that the terms themselves were not misleading or unfair.
Robert Kirkman and fellow producers Glen Mazzara, Gale Anne Hurd and David Alpert filed suit against AMC for breach of contract, claiming that the cable network did not treat them fairly with regards to their profit-sharing on the hit zombie TV series, which has spawned two spinoff series and a "talk back" talk show series; The Talking Dead.
At the heart of the case is what is colloquially referred to in the entertainment industry as "Hollywood Accounting." This is a reference to the fact that producers and actors often have trouble trusting whether the studios and networks are accurately reporting their profits in order to shield the studio from doling out fair profit-sharing.
With The Walking Dead, specifically, the biggest issue is that AMC decided to produce the series through its own studio, rather than license the show from an outside studio, which the network did with its previous hit shows like Breaking Bad and Mad Men. Gale Anne Hurd testified that AMC President Charlie Collier told her that AMC would treat the producers the same, profit-wise, as if The Walking Dead was being produced by an outside studio. Collier denied saying this.
AMC's defense throughout the process has been that the contracts with the various producers laid out the terms and if the lawyers for the producers had had any problems with the contracts, then they should have taken those problems up before signing them. That is essentially what the judge ruled, agreeing that AMC laid out the terms in the contract and that there was no bad faith negotiation by the network or misleading terminology.
One of AMC's lawyers, Orin Snyder at Gibson Dunn, released the statement, "Today’s decision is a total victory for AMC. The judge found in AMC's favor on all seven issues that were presented at trial and confirmed that AMC honored its contracts and paid Mr. Kirkman and the other plaintiffs what they were owed. As the court found, these plaintiffs had the most sophisticated lawyers and agents in Hollywood and they got what they bargained for. We are now turning our attention to the trial in New York — which involves very similar claims by CAA and Frank Darabont — secure in the knowledge that the first court to hold a trial on these issues ruled completely in AMC’s favor.”
Snyder is referring to the simlar suit (still awaiting trial in New York) filed by Frank Darabont, the creator of The Walking Dead TV series, who also argued that AMC played dirty when it came to its accounting and contract practices. AMC's victory in this trial could affect Darabont's case, meaning this could have affected hundreds of millions dollars in "lost" revenue.