AMC is making standalone Walking Dead movies about Rick Grimes

Caution: This post contains SPOILERS for The Walking Dead Episode 905, “What Comes After”

AMC just couldn’t do it. After months of marketing The Walking Dead’s ninth season as “Rick Grimes’ final episodes,” clearly teasing the death of Andrew Lincoln’s long-suffering character, the show just couldn’t let Rick go. Last night, Rick suffered a mortal wound, but instead of dying, he was airlifted to parts unknown, giving audiences the serious sensation that they were being jerked around. It was like watching Glenn fall under that dumpster all over again.

And it’s not The Walking Dead didn’t have the perfect opportunity to send Rick off right; blowing up a bridge with a single shot from his trusty pistol and sending 10,000 walkers to their fiery doom would have been a fitting end for the one-time sheriff-turned-survivalist-turned-post-apocalyptic-leader. But not only did Rick not die, he’s going to star in his own series of made-for-TV movies that take place in the “Walking Dead universe,” a term scarier than any zombie horde the gang has faced over the years.

Scott M. Gimple — the one-time Walking Dead showrunner now serving as chief content officer for the Walking Dead universe — spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about his plans:

"The story of Rick will go on in films. Right now, we’re working on three but there’s flexibility in that. Over the next several years, we’re going to be doing specials, new series are quite a possibility, high-quality digital content and then some content that defies description at the moment. We’re going to dig into the past and see old characters. We’re going to introduce new characters and new situations."

Gimple is already writing the first of three “big budget” made-for-TV-movies. Production on the first film will begin in 2019 and will reportedly last for only two months, compared to the grueling nine the show took to film each season.

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Apparently, Lincoln — who left the show to spend more time with his family in England — was ready to have his character killed off in season 8, but ultimately stayed on for the movies because of the overwhelming fan support. (And there may have been a few 747s full of money involved, we don’t know.) “Rick Grimes is an amazing character and Andy has done an amazing performance,” Gimple said. “There were story ideas brewing that, as the years went on, seemed very compatible with continuing to tell the Rick story in another format that would allow time with his family.”

Meanwhile, fans may be shocked to learn that Lauren Cohan’s Maggie also said farewell in “What Comes After.” New showrunner Angela Kang confirmed the news in a separate interview with The Hollywood Reporter, saying Sunday night’s episode was “the last of her for this season.”

"We’ve been talking to Lauren and hopefully, we’ll get to tell more story for her. We definitely have some things up our sleeve that we’d love to do. A lot of that is just a scheduling conversation, so hopefully that will all work out, because I think mutually we would like to continue with Maggie’s story, for sure."

This is indeed surprising. For the past six years, each season of The Walking Dead has had 16 episodes, but now we’ve said goodbye to two prominent characters five episodes in to season 9. And Maggie was the leader of the Hilltop community and seemed poised to take control of the survivors once Rick was gone. Where does the show go from here?

And other prominent cast members could soon follow Lincoln and Cohan. Norman Reedus (Daryl) and Melissa McBride (Carol) have inked new franchises deals with AMC, both of which allow for the possibility for them to spin off the main show, Rick-like, into other parts of the…ugh…Walking Dead universe. Danai Gurira (Michonne) is still in negotiations to come aboard. “The deals that we made for Norman and Melissa are franchise deals,” AMC programming president David Madden told The Hollywood Reporter. “Our deals with Norman and Melissa allow us the flexibility to either move them or use them in more than one place, depending on what seems creatively right to Scott and to his partners.”

"We do look at this as a universe where we’re trying to expand into as many different places as the show fits. We think this is a franchise that could live across formats. So we want to do it carefully; we want to be strategic; we want to try to do it right. But there is a multi-year plan that could include additional series, digital content and specials…We’re looking to broaden this into a universe where the movies that Andy will be in are the highest-profile things that we do."

As for what those films will involve, the outlook is still vague. “It is about who is and who he’s going to be — and certainly how he deals with the situation he’s in,” Gimple said.
“We know Rick Grimes, he would want to be home.”

He wants to be home, huh? That sort of sounds like Gimple and company are leaving open the possibility that Rick could eventually circle back to the main series, so we can go through all of this nonsense again.

Bubbling under all of this are reports that ratings for The Walking Dead have been falling for a few years and now hover around where they were in the first season. That’s a big change for a show that was pulling in around 15 million live viewers per episode at the height of its popularity. A casual observer might say that AMC would be better off pulling the plug than committing to a tremendously ambitious expanded universe, but maybe the network knows something we don’t.

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