The Walking Dead Lawsuit Gets Nastier
Recent correspondence in the suit between original The Walking Dead showrunner Frank Darabont and AMC make Rick Grimes’ throat-ripping scene seem less vicious by comparison.
In December Darabont and his agents the CAA (Creative Artists Agency) filed a complaint claiming Darabont was wrongfully terminated and that they were scammed out of contractually assured profits from the show through AMC’s “self dealing,” including setting an unrealistically low license fee and AMC’s accounting practices. Last week AMC sent a letter to a NY Supreme Court judge blasting Darabont and denying his claims, according to Deadline.
“Contracts are not screenplays. The law does not permit them to be unilaterally rewritten simply because one party dislikes the ending. Yet, that is precisely what Plaintiffs seek in this action,” said AMC’s attorney Marc E. Kasowitz in the letter.
The letter claims Darabont was already paid close to $3 million for his work on the first two seasons of the show and says AMC will file a motion for summary judgment for liability soon.
The letter accuses Darabont’s legal team of asking for overly broad information about AMC’s business beyond The Walking Dead.
“Doubling down on their ill-conceived theory of the case, Plaintiffs now seek to use discovery to conduct a fishing expedition through the files of Defendants, a television network, two television studios, and a parent company, to obtain access to highly sensitive proprietary and confidential information that bears no relevance to Plaintiffs’ claims, including highly confidential and proprietary information relating to television shows other than the one at issue, The Walking Dead,” the letter says.
Kasowitz also said AMC objects to providing the information about AMC’s business dealings to two of the attorneys brought on by Darabont, entertainment lawyers Alan Wertheimer and Robert Getman. It says letting them in on the information would put AMC at a “significant competitive disadvantage in any deal negotiations involving clients represented by Mr. Wertheimer and Mr. Getman.”
[Source: Deadline]