Frank Darabont’s complaints about AMC revealed in ‘The Walking Dead’ deposition

Two years ago, Frank Darabont and his agents sued AMC over The Walking Dead profits. Now that some court documents have been unsealed, Darabont’s specific claims against the network have been revealed.

Darabont was the original creator of the show, as he had developed Robert Kirkman’s comic book series for television. The director of The Shawshank Redemption remained on the show until 2011, when he was fired during production on the second season.

Darabont sued AMC for breach of contract, claiming that the network owed him millions in profits with AMC licensing the show to itself. According to Entertainment Weekly, the unsealed deposition Darabont gave in September reveals that he claims AMC had originally budgeted the show for $3.4 million per episode. However, he claims that the network cut the budget to $3 million and kept the Georgia tax credit for themselves.

“The cast and crew were earning, busting their butts, leaving it all on the field,” Darabont said. “he fact that we couldn’t then take that tax credit and put it on the screen or alleviate shooting conditions to any degree, I thought that was adding insult to injury.”

Also in the deposition, The Hollywood Reporter notes, Darabont claims that AMC executives rarely visited the set. When they did, they would only meet actors in an “air conditioned tent” and only came for a couple of hours before they flew back to New York. He said that the executives should have “put on some combat boots” to experience the harsh conditions the cast and crew experienced during the hot Georgia summer.

Darabont claimed that he was managing “crisis-level problems arising on the first episode of the second season.”

The director said the specific issue was that he needed to do reshoots on the season two premiere, which would take him away from the writers’ room. Susie Fitzgerald, AMC’s vp scripted programming, agreed, but she later denied doing so.

He believes that the reasons AMC fired him were “concocted.” He said that their claim that he wouldn’t meet with episode directors was not true.

AMC has issued a statement to EW and THR, which reads:

“Frank Darabont has made it clear that he has strong opinions about AMC and the events that led to his departure from The Walking Dead. The reality is that he has been paid millions of dollars under the terms of his contract, which we honored, and we will continue to vigorously defend against this lawsuit.”