AMC Hit With A New Walking Dead Lawsuit Over Spinoff Profits 2 Years After It Ended

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Dave Erickson, the creator of Fear the Walking Dead, is suing AMC, claiming he didn’t receive his fair share of the show’s profits as outlined in his contract. The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in California, is the newest in a growing number of legal battles concerning profit distribution related to The Walking Dead franchise.

AMC has become famous for highly-rated shows like Breaking Bad and Mad Men, but The Walking Dead is its most successful series. Starting in 2010 as an adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s comic book, The Walking Dead ran for twelve seasons and led to several spin-off shows, including Fear the Walking Dead.

This companion story features new characters within the same universe, showing them navigate the start and aftermath of a zombie outbreak. It ran from 2015 to 2023. Now, two years after Fear the Walking Dead concluded, Erickson is taking legal action against AMC, seeking to alter how his residual payments are determined and claiming unspecified financial losses.

According to his lawyers, Aaron Liskin and Nick Soltman, Dave Erickson was the creative force behind AMC’s successful series Fear the Walking Dead, which significantly expanded The Walking Dead franchise and established AMC as a leading network for zombie-themed shows. Despite this success, Erickson hasn’t received any financial profits from AMC and won’t unless legal action is taken.

As a big fan of Fear the Walking Dead, I was really disheartened to read about the issues its showrunner, Erickson, is having with AMC. He’s claiming he hasn’t received any of the profits he was promised. What’s even more frustrating is that while AMC told him the show is losing a huge amount of money – supposedly in the nine figures by 2025 – he’s been informed that others have been paid at least $49 million. Apparently, AMC is limiting how much money the show is said to earn, but not controlling how much it costs to make, leading to a current deficit of $185 million according to his latest statement. It’s a really concerning situation for everyone involved, and I hope it gets resolved fairly.

This legal action follows a $200 million settlement AMC previously paid to Frank Darabont, the creator of The Walking Dead. Robert Kirkman, along with producers Gale Anne Hurd and David Alpert, also sued AMC regarding their share of profits and reportedly received increased payments. This suggests the current plaintiff, Erickson, likely has a strong case for receiving additional compensation as well.

The plaintiffs allege that AMC deliberately delayed clarifying how creators would be paid from show profits and altered the calculation of revenue—waiting to see how successful shows like Fear the Walking Dead would be. The lawsuit claims this demonstrates AMC acted in bad faith and tried to minimize the creators’ share of the profits.

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2025-11-20 00:17