CNN reports that Walking Dead TV series creator, Frank Darabont is suing AMC for allegedly paying itself low licensing fees to air the show, reducing “Modified Adjusted Gross Receipts,” resulting in Darabont allegedly never receiving any payment for the highly watched show.
3 Questions That Arise From This Story
1. Just how gross are modified adjusted gross receipts related to a zombie apocalypse? It’s easy to become desensitized after watching people stab zombie brains through prison fences for an hour each week. Anyway, we suspect a waitress might answer that credit card receipts with phone numbers of patrons they cut off after they drink to the point of groaning like zombies might be sufficiently “gross.”
2. So you can sell an idea to a cable channel, and then it will allegedly pay itself licensing fees of “whatever it wants, but probably something that will make you no money?” Sounds like aspiring creators should watch AMC’s shows about entering business deals, aka Mad Men, and Breaking Bad, before entering a real world business deal!
3. Is there anyone who wins in this deal? The creator? The extras who spend hours getting make-up on each day, only to growl and get shot through an abandoned car window? The people who sit in their basement watching eight hours straight on Netflix, when they could be enjoying the world before the zombie apocalypse? The accounting students who now have to learn what “modified adjusted gross receipts mean? Answer: we hope not, because we want less zombie TV and more vampire TV. And now if you’ll excuse us, we’re headed over to the CW.