Next year, The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman will take AMC to court over profits.

Deadline reports Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Daniel Buckley gave Kirkman and his team the go-ahead to hold a mini-trial starting February 10. The purpose of the trial is "to resolve contract interpretations with the cabler." The mini-trial should last no longer than 2 or 3 weeks and is expected to be part of a lawsuit he filed with executive producers Gale Anne Hurd, David Alpert and Charles Eglee, as well as former showrunner Glenn Mazzara, in August 2017.

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As to this February 2020 court date, AMC lawyer Scott Edelman said, “It would impose very serious hardships on us.” Edelman was hired for Frank Darabont's case against AMC, wherein the former showrunner also filed a lawsuit over profits. Darabont's $300 million case is expected to start in May 2020.

“Between all the discovery that needs to be done, between New York and Los Angeles, it would be a Herculean feat, if we had nothing else,” he added. As such, AMC's team wants the mini-trial to be pushed back to September 2020.

“We disagree, this is a very limited trial of contract interpretation issues,” responded Ron Nessim, a member of Kirkman's team. “It’s five months away, it can be done."

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If a settlement cannot be reached during the February 2020 mini-trial, it will continue in a major trial in summer 2021. According to the report, The Talking Dead and spinoff series Fear the Walking Dead are also subjects of the mini-trial.

"By proposing a year-long delay in the mini-trial, [AMC] essentially kill the idea for the mini-trial: to resolve key issues to create a climate for settlement or at least resolve key contractual interpretation issues so that this Court can rule on the damages’ discovery requests that the parties have been stymied on for months now,” Kirkman's team wrote in a 15-page document conference report.

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“Diverting the defense team’s efforts from trial preparation for the Darabont Actions in the critical months before the May 2020 trial to prepare for and conduct what could be a three-week trial in this Court will significantly strain resources, spread our defense team (some of whose key members are in New York) across the country, and deprive Defendants of a fair opportunity to vigorously defend themselves in a dispute that has been pending for nearly six years in New York state court, in which the plaintiffs seek hundreds of millions of dollars,” AMC's team responded.

Buckley's ruling, then, is a clear victory for Kirkman's team. Notably, the Darabont case is what led Kirkman, Hurd, Alpert, Elgee and Mazzara to feel they had been "shortchanged" by AMC, as the original lawsuit unearthed updated profit statements.

AMC's The Walking Dead stars Norman Reedus, Danai Gurira, Melissa McBride, Josh McDermitt, Christian Serratos, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Nadia Hilker, Dan Fogler, Angel Theory, Lauren Ridloff and Eleanor Matsuura. The series returns for Season 10 on October 6.

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