Jeffrey Dean Morgan Jokes He’ll Host Script Reading of The Walking Dead's Delayed Season 10 Finale on His New Show

Jeffrey Dean Morgan is open to virtually gathering The Walking Dead stars for a reading of the delayed Season 10 finale script on Friday Night In With the Morgans, his new at-home video-chat show hosted with wife Hilarie Burton Morgan. The Greg Nicotero-directed episode originally scheduled to air Sunday, April 12, was postponed indefinitely when post-production work on the finale was unable to be completed before much of California was shut down amid the coronavirus crisis. The zombie drama's tenth season prematurely ended with its penultimate episode, last Sunday's "The Tower," which left off on a cliffhanger trapping Morgan's Negan and other survivors inside an abandoned hospital tower swarmed by a walker horde.

When Morgan was asked on Twitter if he could read the season finale script "like a bedtime story" on Friday Night, Morgan tweeted, "Hahahaha! Yes. I'll get entire cast together on a Group FaceTime!"

As scripting work on The Walking Dead Season 11 continues remotely, filmmakers were "very close" to finishing the special effects-heavy season finale when AMC put a pause on physical work on its three Walking Dead shows on March 13. The Walking Dead and spinoffs Fear the Walking Dead and The Walking Dead: World Beyond are now in various stages of pause due to safety concerns raised by COVID-19.

"We're not quite able to work at the same exact pace as we would when we're in the office, but we were very close to finishing [episode] 16. We usually deliver the episodes for a big effects-heavy episode about two weeks before we air. We were about a week and a half out at the point which California shut down," showrunner Angela Kang told ComicBook.com. "What is continuing remotely is the effects that can be finished, but even after all of that's done, all the shots need to be laid in. There's a color process that needs machines to be finished. There's sound work that we usually do on the Warner Brothers stage, and that's very complex mixing equipment that you can't just move into somebody's house overnight. And multiple people work on that."

Episode 1016 is "very, very close to finishing," Kang said. "I think actually, by the time the world is safe for people to start venturing out, probably all of the effects will be done, and then it's just a handful of processes and it can be turned around very, very quickly. We're very hopeful that we can get it all done very rapidly once we're back up and running."

Morgan is among the AMC talent appearing in the network's We're With You campaign, where AMC is offering select programming, including the first half of The Walking Dead Season 10, for free for a limited time. Morgan appears in The Stars of AMC: We're With You video, where stars from AMC programming appear in homemade videos offering words of encouragement and support.

Guests set for Friday Night In With the Morgans include Morgan's Walking Dead co-star Christian Serratos, who plays Rosita, and former Walking Dead star Sarah Wayne Callies, who played Lori Grimes.

Calling the new show an "experiment," Sarah Barnett, president of AMC Networks' Entertainment Group and AMC Studios, said Friday Night is "a shot at some raw and real entertainment that will uplift and connect with our audiences."

Friday Night In With the Morgans premieres Friday, April 17, at 10/9c on AMC.

The Walking Dead next airs "A Certain Doom" as a special episode later this year. For all things TWD, follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter.