In news that will delight hardcore fans of The Walking Dead and, in equal measure, frustrate those who feel the original series is already long past its best, plans for the franchise to continue for at least “the next decade” have been confirmed by AMC.
“The Walking Dead is a universe,” Josh Sapan, CEO at AMC, said recently. “And we have a plan to manage [it] over the next decade, plus. That plan is a careful plan to respect… the fans of that world.”
But what do the next 10+ years actually look like for that “universe”? Is Sapan promising another decade of The Walking Dead itself on television, or could its future lie in sister series Fear the Walking Dead and possible future spin-offs?
Here’s everything we know so far about the future of the franchise.
The Walking Dead
As the franchise flagship, it appears The Walking Dead itself is going nowhere soon.
A ninth season was officially confirmed in January 2018, with Gimple stepping up to oversee the entire Walking Dead franchise – including Fear the Walking Dead– as the franchise’s Chief Content Officer, with veteran series writer Angela Kang replacing him as the flagship’s showrunner.
Gimple is also “very confident” about a 10th season and beyond, while Robert Kirkman has hinted that, with his original comic book still going strong, the TV adaptation has the potential to run for at least 12 years total.
Gimple later upped that to 20 years(!), while explaining that the TV series might explore more “original material” away from the comics in future – a shift that’s all the more inevitable following the departure of Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes.
All the same, there remains a very basic framework to follow for years to come. Kirkman has said he’s driving the comic series towards a “definitive ending” but that it’s “a very long way off” – for now, he’s continuing to pen new issues of the comic series, so there’s no possibility of running out of source material, a la Game of Thrones, any time soon.
“Everyone is waiting for George RR Martin’s new novel to come out,” said Gale Anne Hurd. “But Robert Kirkman is continuing to write The Walking Dead [comic series] – so there’s a lot more material for us to draw from.”
Though he’s acknowledged that ending the show has been discussed, AMC boss Sapan has also implied that the show’s got a long lifespan, because it still makes a ton of cash for the cable channel.
While, in Sapan’s own words, the series may have suffered “some minor erosion” in the TV ratings, he added: “It’s pretty alive and vital, and there’s a long time that we’re going to be playing with The Walking Dead.”
If you do the ratings maths, The Walking Dead is still one of the most popular TV shows in the world right now… so it’s no surprise that Greg Nicotero’s insisting he and the creative team can “keep it going for as long as [they] want it go on”.
Fear the Walking Dead
It doesn’t do Walking Dead numbers – around 2-3 million watched the third season, compared to the 10-11 million who regularly tuned in for the original’s seventh run – but Fear still outranks many of AMC’s non-zombie shows.
Its ratings performance has been strong enough to guarantee the spin-off – now with added Morgan (Lennie James) – a fifth season, scheduled to begin filming later this year for an early 2019 premiere.
Beyond that, a sixth season will largely depend on those ratings not dropping any further – with audiences for the still-airing fourth run regularly dipping below 2 million. (Fear might just about outperform, say, Better Call Saul, but you’d imagine it’s also quite a bit more expensive to produce.)
Though with the show recently undergoing a divisive reboot, with new creative talent bringing brought on both behind and in front of the camera, it’s clear AMC is still invested in Fear the Walking Dead for the time being.
The Walking Dead universe – more spin-offs?
Much like how The CW has become “the superhero network” following the 2012 launch of Arrow and the subsequent proliferation of DC Comics-inspired series on the channel, could AMC become “the zombie network” in a post-Mad Men and Breaking Bad era?
If the cabler is looking to recoup after the loss of two of its biggest series, then expanding the Walking Dead brand beyond two shows makes sense, at least from a financial standpoint.
What’s more, it appears that the thinking behind moving Scott Gimple into the senior position of Chief Content Officer was to set him to work expanding the franchise. In March, he said: “I’m hoping to do a variety of different projects… but maybe in different rhythms and formats and things like that.”
Gimple refused to give concrete details about any future spin-off projects, but suggested that they may include characters familiar to fans. “We’re experimenting with new ways to do it,” he said. “We’re seeing different lengths of seasons and different formats… different ways to tell stories, possibly with characters we know and possibly with characters we don’t [know].
“We’re figuring it all out right now… it’s us organising it and deciding how to do it, how it all works together. We really have a plan that goes into the future.”
Possibly coincidentally, possibly not, quotes emerged from The Walking Dead‘s executive producer and make-up guru Greg Nicotero about the potential for another companion series.
“I think that our hopes are — my hopes — would be that we would get into an entirely different location, like a cold weather scenario,” he said, hinting that a series set outside the United States could explore “frozen zombies” in colder climes. “I think there’s a lot more opportunities outside of the US for a zombie show,” Nicotero said.
“It’s something we’ve discussed from time to time, and we have seen a bit of Mexico in Fear the Walking Dead,” Robert Kirkman also wrote, in response to an earlier reader query in the letters’ page of the comic.
“I don’t really plan to expand things in the comic side of things ever, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we eventually do something internationally in the TV space.”
© Getty Images Albert L Ortega
Above: Scott Gimple
Quizzed on the latest spin-off plans at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, Gimple again heavily implied that there are more Walking Dead series coming. “There’s a lot of stuff that’s cooking in the garage right now. We’re working on all sorts of things, and as the months go on, we’re going to have a lot more to say about it.”
Asked where he’d like to take the world of The Walking Dead next, he added: “We’re currently working on some things that answer that question, so I shouldn’t answer it.”
With potentially multiple new series in development, it appears that, even as The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead are starting to show their age, that Walking Dead “universe” that Josh Sapan spoke about is set to grow and grow.
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