‘Fear the Walking Dead’ Creator Dave Erickson Sues AMC for Profits

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’s profits for the series is calculated, alleging that he is 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.

The case opens a new chapter in labyrinthine litigation involving The Walking Dead that’s put a spotlight on AMC’s 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.

“Dave Erickson created a massive hit for AMC in Fear the Walking Deadexpanding The Walking Dead Universe and cementing AMC as the zombie network,” Aaron Liskin and Nick Soltman, lawyers for the showrunner, tell The Hollywood Reporter. Despite the show’s “extraordinary success, Mr. Erickson has not received a single dollar in profits from AMC and, absent this action, he never will.”

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

But the lawsuit says that Erickson hasn’t 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.

The lawsuit nods to a long line of cases over profits for The Walking Dead. In 2021, AMC reached a $200 million settlement with Frank Darabont, but it raised a question that’s 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?

Like that ongoing case, Erickson argues that AMC is breaching its contract by declining to improve its definition for something called “modified adjusted gross receipts” (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 “best possible definition,” including any alterations granted to other talent, the lawsuit says.

“We still need to negotiate improvements to the backend definition,” Erickson’s reps wrote in a 2016 email to Stein, according to the complaint. “You were going to let us know the differences between Dave’s current definition and the best definitions you’ve given others.”

Stein replied, “I will review and propose those modifications when I start drafting this up if we are getting to a resolution.” The exec conceded in this exchange that Erickson would benefit from any modifications given to profit participants, the lawsuit argues.

The 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. “Simply put, Erickson was being considered as if he had the worst possible definition for a hit show in the history of television,” Liskin writes. As of 2025, at least $49 million in profits have been paid out.

It’s 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’s eight season run. Erickson is seeking a court order that would force AMC, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment, to put him on equal footing.

By the showrunner’s thinking, AMC purposely withheld specifying the exact terms of his profit participation, with the intent of crafting it so that he’d 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.

“AMC was building the plane while flying it,” Soltman says. They love waiting to see if a show is a hit to provide the definition. Then, they know they’re walking you into a deficit.”

Also 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.

The upshot, “AMC’s 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’s bad faith and efforts to make the series creators’ profit participation meaningless,” the lawsuit says.

Erickson, 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.