Frank Darabont, the Oscar-nominated film director who got The Walking Dead off the ground at AMC as its showrunner, has sued the network for tens of millions of dollars in profit sharing he says he is owed, according to Hollywood Reporter.  Darabont was fired before production on the second season began, just a week after making a presentation at Comic-Con (see “’Walking Dead’ Bombshell”).  AMC’s desire to cut costs, including pocketing a credit from Georgia for siting the production there instead of using it to defray production expenses, was seen as a reason for the firing at the time (see “Network Budget Cuts Behind Darabont’s Departure”).

But Darabont argues in the lawsuit that there was a broader pattern of AMC allocating revenues in ways that deprived him (and his agency CAA, a co-plaintiff) from any profit share.  Darabont had worked five years to get the show on the air, wrote and directed the pilot, and supervised the creation of scripts for all of the first season and many of the second season episodes.  His contract with AMC provided for a profit share, but Darabont charges that AMC’s production arm charges its sister company, the network, too little for the show which means that the profits are in the network, not in the production of the show. 

This is similar to an argument that was made in a lawsuit over Smallville, which argued that Time Warner mis-allocated profits between the production arm that produced the show and its various other divisions, including DC Comics and its networks, which kept the producers of the show from seeing any profit participation from a long-running, very successful show.  That lawsuit was eventually settled, under undisclosed terms (see “’Smallville’ Suit Settled”).

In the case of The Walking Dead, Darabont’s suit reveals that according to the way AMC was allocating the money between its divisions, the show was $49 million in the red after two seasons.  

Darabont also charges that he was fired to keep his profit percentage from increasing based on his two-year deal.