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'Walking Dead' Lawsuit Spills Obscene Emails and Tales of Greed Over TV's Billion-Dollar Hit

In seven years, The Walking Dead has become the most prosperous drama ever to air on cable television. The AMC zombie drama has likely booked more than $1 billion in gross receipts based on an analysis of newly filed court documents that shed unprecedented light on the economics of the show and on Hollywood in general. But after Walking Dead premiered in October 2010 to 5 million viewers (it now draws 17 million, more even than primetime NFL games on broadcast networks), AMC decided to cut the show’s second season budget by 25 percent.

The summer of 2011 was a trying time for Frank Darabont, the Oscar nominated writer and director of The Shawshank Redemption who adapted Robert Kirkman’s post-apocalyptic graphic novel. Darabont worked hard to get the show on the air —NBC once had it in “turnaround” and other networks like Fox and Turner passed — but once Walking Dead came out, the series about middle America citizens struggling to survive a zombie apocalypse earned instant adoration. So Darabont was stunned by AMC's decision to slash the budget. What’s more, after Darabont decided that a single set location — a Georgia farmhouse — would be the solution to the financial crunch, AMC executives demanded to see all of the season’s scripts up front before shooting. According to Darabont, AMC's Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan told him “it’s unheard of” to have scripts delivered so early in the process of producing a season.

Pressure was mounting for Darabont, who felt he was wrestling a giant alligator on a daily basis. And after footage came in, Darabont wasn’t liking what he saw — and he wasn’t shy about expressing his distaste in a highly obscene way, according to the newly revealed documents in his lawsuit against AMC.

In one June 2011 email to executive producer Gale Anne Hurd and others, he wrote, “strawberry float you all for giving me chest pains because of the staggering strawberry floating incompetence, blindness to the important beats, and the beyond-arrogant lack of regard for what is written being exhibited on set every day. I deserve better than a heart attack because people are too stupid to read a script and understand the words. Does anybody disagree with me? Then join the C-cam operator and go find another job that doesn’t involve deliberately strawberry floating up my show scene by scene."

That wouldn’t be the only profane rant that month. In one email, Darabont asked why camera operators were being paid when “Ray Charles could operate better." In yet another, he compared one of the show’s directors to someone who he formerly worked with who had suffered massive, debilitating strokes. “It’s like we yanked some kid with no experience out of high school and put her in charge of directing a show,” wrote Darabront.

And to AMC’s executives, he was no less polite. “Please let's stop invoking 'the writers room,'” he emailed AMC’s Ben Davis. “There IS no writers room, which you know as well as I do. I am the writers room. The strawberry floating lazy assholes who were supposedly going to be my showrunners threw that responsibility on me after wasting five months of my time.”

Darabont was fired.

But he wasn't buried quietly. Like the fictional “walkers” on the series, Darabont and his agents at Creative Artists Agency came back for blood, filing a massive lawsuit in December 2013 alleging they were denied rightful profit participation from Walking Dead. They are claiming $280 million in damages. Now a treasure trove of materials has just been made public after the parties spent more than a half a year arguing about what should remain confidential. What’s been revealed — thousands of pages of summary judgment arguments, depositions, redacted profit participation statements, expert testimony, and even details about the financials for other AMC shows like Mad Men, Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul —represent a huge exposure of Hollywood financial secrets.

Alvin Flummux wrote:Corporate shitstains.

Floex wrote:Has this show been cancelled yet?

Floex wrote:Has this show been cancelled yet?

Alvin Flummux wrote:Why does it look like Rick is going to wake up in a hospital bed and the whole show will turn out to be a coma dream?

Riksilver wrote:Looks like at least there'll be more going on than last season, hope to god it's not 90% filler again. That scene at the end is equal parts weird, cringey and intriguing; I'm kind of hoping it's setup for season 9, maybe it'll flash forward several years and reshuffle the cast for a new setting.