{"id":700032,"date":"2025-11-19T22:50:49","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T19:50:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/fear-the-walking-dead-creator-dave-erickson-sues-amc-for-profits\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T22:50:49","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T19:50:49","slug":"fear-the-walking-dead-creator-dave-erickson-sues-amc-for-profits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/fear-the-walking-dead-creator-dave-erickson-sues-amc-for-profits\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Fear the Walking Dead\u2019 Creator Dave Erickson Sues AMC for Profits"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tAMC has been sued over its handling of profit payouts for Fear the Walking Dead<\/em> by creator Dave Erickson, who accuses the network of breach of contract for shortchanging him backend payments. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe lawsuit, filed on Wednesday in California state court, challenges the structure through which Erickson\u2019s profits for the series<\/a> is calculated, alleging he\u2019s not on equal footing as other participants. His latest statement shows a $185 million deficit, essentially making it impossible for him to break even, according to the complaint.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe case opens a new chapter in labyrinthine litigation involving The Walking Dead <\/em>that\u2019s put a spotlight on AMC\u2019s accounting practices, dealings with talent and conflicts of interest that arise with vertical integration when the producer of a TV show also distributes it via an affiliated entity that pays a license fee. Erickson seeks a court order modifying his backend payment formula, plus unspecified damages.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDave Erickson created a massive hit for AMC in\u00a0Fear the Walking Dead<\/em>, expanding\u00a0The Walking Dead<\/em>\u00a0Universe and cementing AMC as the zombie network,\u201d Aaron Liskin and Nick Soltman, lawyers for the showrunner, tell The Hollywood Reporter<\/em>. Despite the show\u2019s \u201cextraordinary success, Mr. Erickson has not received a single dollar in profits from AMC and, absent this action, he never will.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFear the Walking Dead<\/em> made cable history in 2015 when it premiered to 10.1 million viewers. It remained a ratings juggernaut across its first season run, with some episodes topping Sunday Night Football<\/em>. The three seasons in which Erickson was the showrunner were by far the most watched in the series. It likely cleared hundreds of millions dollars in gross receipts.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut the lawsuit says that Erickson hasn\u2019t seen any money from his profit participation in the show. While AMC represented to him that the series is running a nine-figure deficit as of 2025, more than a decade after its premiere, his statement showed that at least $49 million has been paid to other unnamed participants, the complaint claims.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe lawsuit nods to a long line of cases over profits for The Walking Dead.<\/em> In 2021, AMC reached a $200 million settlement with Frank Darabont, but it raised a question that\u2019s become a legal headache for the network since: Did the deal trigger so-called most favored nations clauses, which ensures equal treatment if another party negotiates better terms, held by creator Robert Kirkman and other executive producers? <\/p>\n

\n\tLike that ongoing case, Erickson argues that AMC is breaching his contract by declining to improve his definition for something called \u201cmodified adjusted gross receipts\u201d (MAGR), a form of revenue minus certain costs. When his representatives asked AMC Studios head of business affairs Scott Stein about the issue, the executive stated that Erickson would get the \u201cbest possible definition,\u201d including any alterations granted to other talent, the lawsuit says.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe still need to negotiate improvements to the backend definition,\u201d Erickson\u2019s reps wrote in a 2016 email to Stein, according to the complaint. \u201cYou were going to let us know the differences between Dave\u2019s current definition and the best definitions you\u2019ve given others.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tStein replied, \u201cI will review and propose those modifications when I start drafting this up if we are getting to a resolution.\u201d The exec conceded in this exchange that Erickson would benefit from any modifications given to profit participants, the lawsuit argues.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe litigation has been brewing for years. A 2021 statement showed that roughly $14 million had already been paid out to other backend participants, meaning that their statements would have to show profits of over $80 million, according to the complaint. \u201cSimply put, Erickson was being accounted to as if he had the worst possible definition for a hit show in the history of television,\u201d Liskin writes. As of 2025, at least $49 million in profits have been paid out.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s believed executive producers Gale Anne Hurd and David Alpert, plus Kirkman, all received improvements that increased their backend payouts over the course of the show\u2019s eight season run. Erickson is seeking a court order that would force AMC, which didn\u2019t immedia<\/a>tely respond to a request for comment, to put him on equal footing.<\/p>\n

\n\tBy the showrunner\u2019s thinking, AMC purposely withheld specifying the exact terms of his profit participation, with the intent of crafting it so that he\u2019d never break even. This tracks with allegations from Darabont and Kirkman, both of whom said that AMC waited to see how the show would perform to spell out the terms under its unilateral right to structure MAGR.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAMC was building the plane while flying it,\u201d Soltman says. They love waiting to see if a show is a hit to provide the definition. Then, they know they\u2019re walking you into a deficit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAlso at issue: alleged self-dealing under an imputed license fee, which is intended to provide realistic, market-rate value in dealings involving a parent company and affiliated entity in order to replicate what the show would get if it were made by an independent studio. AMC put a cap on the imputed fee but not the corresponding costs, which became more expensive as the series continued, in a way that foreclosed any possibility of Erickson realizing backend payments, according to the complaint.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe upshot, \u201cAMC\u2019s failure to provide a MAGR definition until after it created its new streaming service, and then accounting as if such exploitation is subsumed within the imputed fee, is further evidence of AMC\u2019s bad faith and efforts to make the series creators\u2019 profit participation meaningless,\u201d the lawsuit says.<\/p>\n

\n\tErickson, who brings claims for breach of contract, fraudulent misrepresentation and breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, is represented by Kinsella Holley Iser Kump Steinsapir, a powerhouse plaintiff-side profit participation law firm that represented Darabont in his lawsuit against AMC.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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AMC has been sued over its handling of profit payouts for Fear the Walking Dead by creator Dave Erickson, who accuses the network of breach of contract for shortchanging him backend payments. The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday in California state court, challenges the structure through which Erickson\u2019s profits for the series is calculated, alleging he\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-700032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-mediaa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=700032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700032\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=700032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=700032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=700032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}