AMC Global Media has struck a $500 million co-exclusive streaming deal with Netflix for the entire Walking Dead Universe, giving the world's largest subscription service a share of rights to one of television's most enduring horror franchises. CEO Kristin Dolan announced the licensing agreement during the company's second-quarter 2026 earnings call on July 30, 2026, framing it as a cornerstone of AMC's push to monetise its library across multiple platforms. Co-exclusive means AMC keeps the shows on its own streaming services while Netflix gets to stream them too, a model that has become common as studios look to squeeze more revenue from existing titles. Variety

The deal lands against a quarter of mixed signals. AMC's streaming revenue for Q2 2026, covering March through May, rose 6% year-over-year to $180 million. U.S. ad sales on the linear television side told a harder story: down 11% to $109 million, a slide that mirrors the broader decline of traditional cable advertising. Variety

Wall Street had expected better. Analysts polled by LSEG forecast a loss of 7 cents per share on $554.65 million in revenue. AMC reported an adjusted loss of 28 cents per share on $547 million in revenue, missing on both counts. Even so, the company raised its full-year 2026 financial guidance, betting that deals like the Netflix agreement and renewed distribution pacts with Comcast and YouTube will carry the back half of the year. Variety

AMC also tightened its grip on subscriber numbers. During the January-to-March 2026 quarter, streaming subscribers dipped 1% year-over-year to 10.1 million. Then in its May 2026 earnings report, AMC said it would stop releasing streaming subscriber figures on a regular quarterly basis, a shift that makes it harder for outside analysts to track the health of services like AMC+, Acorn TV, Shudder, Sundance Now, ALLBLK, HIDIVE, and All Reality. Variety

AMC's portfolio spans well beyond streaming. Its linear networks include AMC, BBC AMERICA (which handles U.S. distribution and sales for BBC News), IFC, SundanceTV, and We TV. The company owns film distribution labels Independent Film Company and RLJE Films, the latter acquired outright in the fourth quarter of 2025, along with in-house production arm AMC Studios. Variety

A leadership change arrived in June 2026, when AMC appointed Hozefa Lokhandwala as Chief Financial Officer. The Q2 earnings call on July 30 marked one of his first public-facing moments in the role. AMC Investor Relations

For fans of The Walking Dead, the Netflix deal means the franchise's spin-offs and flagship episodes will be available to a far larger streaming audience without leaving AMC's own platforms. For AMC, it means $500 million in licensing revenue and a vote of confidence from a company that rarely spends that kind of money on someone else's content.