NEW YORK • Both parties are dead-set and not walking away from a court fight.

On Thursday, Frank Darabont, a key creator of The Walking Dead, filed a second lawsuit against AMC Networks, claiming to have been deprived of tens of millions of dollars of additional profit from the hit cable television series.

The complaint by Darabont and Creative Artists Agency (CAA), which represents him, deepens a legal battle that began with a 2013 lawsuit, in which they now claim to have been deprived of more than US$280 million (S$369 million) of profit over the show's first seven seasons.

AMC's lawyer Orin Snyder accused the plaintiffs of seeking an "unjustified windfall" and said his client is confident it will prevail in court.

"At the heart of this lawsuit is the greed of CAA," he noted. "AMC has been an honest steward of the series and has paid all its creative partners handsomely and appropriately."

Darabont had helped develop The Walking Dead, a show about a zombie apocalypse, but was fired during the second season, which began in 2011.

In Thursday's complaint, which seeks at least US$10 million, he and CAA accused AMC of engaging in "shady accounting practices" that they discovered after a recent audit of the first three years of The Walking Dead.

REUTERS