The Walking Dead boss taking time to “perfect” Rick Grimes movies

The Walking Dead boss Scott M. Gimple updates fans about the slow-in-coming Rick Grimes movies, as well as potential crossovers with all the spinoff shows.

At this point, it’s widely known that The Walking Dead is finally coming to an end after season 11. But the end of the mothership show isn’t the end of The Walking Dead universe. The long-running spinoff Fear the Walking Dead is still going strong, The Walking Dead: World Beyond just premiered, and there are several movies planned that will revolve around Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln).

The planned trilogy of movies was announced two years ago, and we still have very few details about them. Some fans have worried that they’ve been dropped altogether.

Well, the good news is that they are still very much alive. The bad news? The coronavirus pandemic has slowed down TV and film production around the world, and the Rick Grimes movies were not immune. At least we still have this cool teaser to look at:

Speaking with Looper, AMC Chief Content Officer Scott M. Gimple, spoke about how the wider Walking Dead universe will crossover with the movies. That universe has been expanding of late, with World Beyond especially pushing its boundaries. That show explores the Civic Republic, an advanced society with a powerful military that’s been teased several times throughout the main series. It also seems to be a nexus point for crossovers.

Still, Gimple doesn’t think the first set of movies will be as full as crossovers as fans may hope. “I think it’s probable not to see much crossover in these first movies — but, again, everything’s changing,” he said. “And this is taking a lot longer now than we expected. I’m just talking from a COVID-19 point of view, this big chunk of time we didn’t anticipate. I think Robert Kirkman said it best: ‘We’re using this time to really go over it and really road test it and really consider all the different directions we’re going in.'”

"So, we’re still in the lab in some ways. We’ve done a lot of work on it, but we’re trying to perfect it at the moment."

Given the COVID-19 situation, it makes perfect sense that things are still in flux. Extra time to perfect the scripts can only be a good thing, right?

Something that might change is the amount of World Beyond episodes we’re getting. As it stands, the spinoff is a limited series with only 20 episodes, although like everything else, that’s not set in stone. “If we need to make more, we will,” Gimple said.

Once the flagship show ends, we’re also getting a Daryl-Carol spinoff and an anthology series called Tales of The Walking Dead. And if you think The Walking Dead has already gone overboard with spinoffs, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Just the other week, Lauren Cohan (Maggie) told Entertainment Weekly that there’s have talk of a Maggie Rhee solo show.

"I know that there are murmurings of an extended story with Maggie when the official mothership is done."

Cohan is also confirmed to appear in the six extra season 10 episodes coming early next year. In fact, she’s currently in Georgia filming them. Will these episodes continue on from the season 10 finale? Might they fill us on on what she doing since she left the series? Either way, I know I’ll be watching them!

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