A word of warning for those who have not seen this weekend's The Walking Dead... SPOILER ALERT! If you're invested in the world and characters and aren't fully up-to-date, come back after you've watched 'What Comes After'. There, you've been warned.
Still here? Read on at your own peril...
This week's big swan song for Andrew Lincoln and the Rick Grimes character he's played since 2010 turned out to be not quite the death finale some thought it would be given how people usually leave the series. Instead, he was flown away in a helicopter, injured after blowing up a bridge full of zombies to save his friends – but still alive. And now we know that we'll learn what happens next with him in a series of original films that will air on the channel (and, one assumes, on its regular Fox home here in the UK).
It's all part of a big plan by Walking Dead overlord Scott M. Gimple, who moved up to become Chief Content Officer, developing shows, movies and other spin-offs set in the expanding Dead world.
"We have a lot on the horizon – starting with a new epic featuring one of the greatest leading actors in television history and one of the best people I’ve ever met,” Gimple said on Dead aftershow Talking Dead. "These films are going to be big evolutions of what we’ve been doing on the show, with the scope and scale of features. We’re starting with the first part of the continuing story of Rick Grimes, and there is much more on the way, featuring yet-unseen worlds of The Walking Dead and faces from the show’s past, as well as new characters we hope to become favorites, told by TWD veterans and emerging voices. We want to break new ground with different, distinct stories, all part of the same world that’s captured our imagination for nearly a decade of the Dead."
Which does indeed mean more from Andrew Lincoln, who will be able to fit in more time with family around quick trips Stateside to film the movies instead of the involved schedule of the show. "It’s not the beginning of the end, it’s the end of the beginning," Lincoln said. "And I like the idea that we get to tell a bigger story, maybe with a sort of wider vista. And I’ve always been interested in what’s going on out there, you know, whether or not there is contact with the wider world. I want to know the meta of it all. And I suppose to be able to kind of touch upon that in a contained story for me is a very exciting proposition... Maybe it’s the start of a bigger story." The first of the films, featuring the next step in Rick's story, should be shooting next year.
So yes, those plans that were announced in September are coming together...
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