AMC to Pay $120 Million to Settle Walking Dead Profit Lawsuit, Bringing Total Franchise Payouts to $320 Million

AMC Global Media disclosed in a Tuesday, September 8 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it has settled a breach-of-contract lawsuit brought by Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman and producers Gale Anne Hurd, Glen Mazzara, David Alpert and Charles Eglee. The deal was struck Friday, September 4, according to Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, and heads off a federal trial that had been scheduled for October.

AMC will pay $85 million in cash by September 18. Another $35 million is due by January 31, 2027, but that payment isn't a clean buyout. According to the SEC filing, it will be treated as an advance against future profit participation, meaning Kirkman and the other producers keep an ongoing stake in whatever the franchise earns going forward rather than cashing out entirely.

AMC says it will take a one-time $85 million charge in its September quarter. The company also told investors the settlement is cutting its expected 2026 free cash flow from roughly $220 million to about $150 million, once the cash payment and a related tax benefit are factored in, according to Variety.

A Fight Over the Fine Print

The dispute centered on a single accounting term: modified adjusted gross receipts, or MAGR. That formula determines how much profit participants are owed once a show turns a profit on paper. Kirkman's team argued in their complaint that AMC's version of MAGR was written to ensure the show would "not have paid out a single dollar in profit participation," despite The Walking Dead generating billions in advertising, merchandise, streaming and licensing revenue over its run, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Part of what made that argument land: AMC signed Kirkman for the TV rights to his comic book in 2009, but didn't issue its formal MAGR definition until March 2011, months after the first season had already become a runaway hit, the Times reported.

AMC's side of the story deserves a fair hearing too. Variety reported that AMC spent years arguing in court that the producers' suit was "little more than a cash grab," pointing out that the plaintiffs had already collected $70 million under their existing agreements before this settlement. That's a company defending a contract it wrote and negotiated, not conceding it cheated anyone.

The Timeline Gets Complicated

The coverage diverges in a way worth noting. The Los Angeles Times, The Hollywood Reporter and Nerdist all describe the settled lawsuit as one filed in November 2022, later moved to federal court on jurisdictional grounds.

Variety tells a longer story: the producers first sued AMC in 2017 over the same MAGR dispute, and that case "sputtered out" in 2022 when a judge ruled they hadn't been cheated. But in the interim, AMC had settled with Darabont for $200 million, which gave the producers' lawyers a new angle. They filed a fresh 2022 lawsuit arguing that "most favored nations" clauses in their own contracts entitled them to whatever terms Darabont got. That's the suit a federal judge refused to dismiss in 2024, and the one that was headed toward an October 2026 trial before Friday's settlement.

Both timelines end up in the same place, but Variety's version explains why there were effectively two rounds of litigation rather than one continuous case.

A Very Expensive Franchise

The math now stands at $320 million in total settlements tied to Walking Dead profit disputes: $200 million to Darabont and CAA in 2021, plus this $120 million deal. And AMC keeps making money off the franchise regardless. In July, the company signed a five-year, $500 million co-exclusive streaming deal with Netflix covering all 371 episodes across the Walking Dead universe worldwide, a deal that ends AMC's prior U.S. exclusivity arrangement, the Times reported.

Not every claim against AMC is resolved. Ground News reported that a separate lawsuit from Fear the Walking Dead co-creator Dave Erickson remains pending, even as the network continues to profit from the franchise's streaming value.

The settlement lands amid a rougher year generally for big entertainment-industry legal fights in Los Angeles. California Attorney General Rob Bonta's lawsuit challenging Paramount's acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery has stalled productions and prompted Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass to publicly urge both sides to settle, warning that "too many productions in L.A. are now at a standstill," according to Breitbart. That case, unlike AMC's, remains unresolved, with no trial date confirmed in the available reporting and Bonta having not indicated any change in position.

For AMC investors, the near-term question is simpler: whether a $150 million free cash flow year, down from $220 million, changes how the company handles debt or future content spending heading into 2027.