The Walking Dead’s Andrew Lincoln on Rick Grimes Movie: “We’re Working on It”

Andrew Lincoln says Walking Dead creatives are "working on" bringing back his character in the franchise's first feature film that finds the missing Rick Grimes in a new corner of the zombie apocalypse. Announced by TWD chief content officer Scott Gimple following Lincoln's exit from The Walking Dead television series in November 2018, the project from Gimple and franchise creator Robert Kirkman originally eyed a 2019 production start but has lingered in the development stage. In July, executive producer David Alpert confirmed the untitled feature is unable to begin filming due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

While virtually promoting his first post-Walking Dead project, the Australia-shot Penguin Bloom, Lincoln relayed a brief update he shared with a fan during a surfing trip in Cornwall, England:

"I saw this guy, and he looked up, and I knew [he recognized me]. I didn't have a hat on, I was just in a wetsuit, and I was with my son. And this dude ... he clocked me," Lincoln told Collider. "I was like, 'Ah, here we go.' It was the coolest thing — he walks up, he saw I was with my son, and he walked past me. I thought, 'Oh, maybe he doesn't know.' All I heard was, 'Come back, Rick.'"

"It was so moving," he continued. "I turned around, and I just went, 'We're working on it.' So that's my answer to you, we're working on it."

A father of two, Lincoln departed the Georga-filmed The Walking Dead after eight years to spend more time with family in his native England.

Gimple previously revealed Lincoln is "super involved" with the feature film and "itching to get back" to the Walking Dead Universe.

"So much of what we've been doing is honing and tweaking and experimenting, and we're just in the lab with it," Gimple told ComicBook during virtual Comic-Con weekend. "And we've been playing around a lot. We were doing that before and now it's forced upon us. We don't know when we would be doing it if everything was finished right now, we just don't know, but we're still in the lab. We're still goofing around with it. We're still playing around with it."

Addressing delays during the virtual Skybound Xpo in July, Alpert and Kirkman said work continues to progress behind the scenes, and the Walking Dead film will shoot once it's safe to do so.

"I don't want anyone to think that we're just kind of waiting around for this pandemic to end," Kirkman said. "I would say that, if anything, the pandemic is going to make a lot of movies better. I think the Rick Grimes movie chief among them, just because we're getting a lot more time to cook this thing and make sure it's perfect."

The Walking Dead feature film does not have a release date. For all things TWD, follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter.