‘Walking Dead’ Spoilers: AMC Puts A Big Foot Down On ‘The Spoiling Dead’

With the Walking Dead Season 6 finale rapidly approaching (although not rapidly enough for many fans), spoilers and speculation have been rampant of late, and AMC is not happy with some of what they’ve seen, according to Cinema Blend. The specific target of their anger is the popular Walking Dead spoiler forum The Spoiling Dead. The specific event that provoked their ire was the popular forum’s release of the audio track for this Sunday’s final scene, the one in which we will meet Negan.

Every season finale is big for The Walking Dead, but this year’s has even more hype surrounding it because of the introduction of Negan, a character that comic readers tell us is a villain like we’ve never seen on The Walking Dead before.

Creator Robert Kirkman recently described him to Entertainment Weekly.

“Negan is kind… respectful… psychotic… Negan is ruthless. This is a very nuanced character that has a lot of different shades to him. There’s a lot of honor to him. There’s a rule system in place. I think he’s unlike anything anybody’s experienced in The Walking Dead thus far.

“He’s definitely a different kind of bad guy. He’s sadistic and dangerous and all those things that you would expect from a Governor, but he’s much more in control. He’s much less sporadic and he has much less of a temper. This is not a guy who’s going to lose control and start shooting his own people the way the Governor did.”

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Anticipation has grown among Walking Dead fans, and spoilers have proliferated across the internet especially in the last week. But when The Spoiling Dead leaked the audio of the big scene on their Facebook page a few days ago, AMC was not pleased. Three days before the Walking Dead season finale, they issued DMCA take-down notice to The Spoiling Dead. The group had to remove all their posts they had made on any social media that provided the audio, and Facebook locked the group’s page for everything but deleting comments and banning users, a restriction that will last, “coincidentally,” for three days.

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This isn’t the first time the group has been targeted for their Walking Dead spoilers. They have received DMCA notices from AMC before and say that they haven’t been able to give concrete reasons for them. Spoilers, for The Walking Dead or any other show, don’t fall under the category of piracy because they typically come from someone associated with the show. The Spoiling Dead also claims that there are many other Walking Dead sites, but AMC doesn’t go after any of them — just The Spoiling Dead. That statement has not been confirmed.

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Will this have a long-term impact on The Spoiling Dead and other Walking Dead spoiler sites or on sites that provide spoilers for other AMC shows? What about spoiler sites in general? Time will tell. But for now, and at least until the Walking Dead Season 6 finale airs, spoilers have been effectively shut down, at least spoilers provided by The Spoiling Dead.

The Walking Dead has been on AMC since 2010. This Sunday will be its 100th episode. It has received 137 award nominations and has won 44. Among its wins are multiple Primetime Emmys for Outstanding Prosthetic Makeup for a Series, Miniseries, Movie or a Special. The current cast of The Walking Dead includes five who have been with the show since 2010. They are Andrew Lincoln (Rick Grimes), Chandler Riggs (Rick’s son, Carl), Norman Reedus (Daryl Dixon), Steven Yeun (Glenn Rhee), and Melissa McBride (Carol Peletier). The show is based on comics of the same name. Robert Kirkman is the author of the Walking Dead comics and creator of the television show.

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