The Walking Dead: World Beyond Has Crossovers and Movie Connections

The Walking Dead: World Beyond is going to expand the Dead universe on AMC later this year, serving as the third show set in the post-apocalyptic zombie world. This new series. complete with new cast members and a fresh location, will have strong ties to The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead, having full eligibility for crossovers but maintaining its own independent vibe. Of course, as the world gets bigger, this means those crossovers and ties are not limited to the TV shows but can also include the promised Rick Grimes movies which will bring Andrew Lincoln's character to the big screen.

"We're going to be discovering this very big aspect to the world that we haven't yet seen," The Walking Dead's chief content officer Scott Gimple said of The Walking Dead: World Beyond while talking to EW. "We've seen glimpses of it on the shows with the helicopters and with the soldier that we saw, Isabelle on Fear. The movie does obviously touch upon some of that mythology as well as Rick being in one of those helicopters. In some ways, World Beyond, it's a big story and yet it's sort of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to Rick's Hamlet, meaning the show and the movie touch upon some of the same things, but they're not really that deeply related."

The Walking Dead: World Beyond might just be more heavily tied to the Rick movies than some fans are expecting by the time its first season comes to an end. "We'll learn more though about that group, that civilization, the nature of some other civilizations of the world through World Beyond, and that will give some of the background for the world that Rick finds himself in," Gimple said. "But the story of World Beyond doesn't really intersect with the movies other than they share knowledge and interaction with some of these bigger things going on in the world."

In fact, World Beyond will service the Rick Grimes movies more than either of the other Dead universe shows. "I will say that though this mythology appeared on The Walking Dead and on Fear the Walking Dead, those two shows aren't going to be as involved with this," Gimple said. World Beyond will, more specifically, be diving into the existence of the three communities represented in the three-ring logo on the helicopter which took Rick Grimes away.

"[The Walking Dead will] occasionally touch upon it, but really there's going to be brand new mythologies on each of these shows and even outside of these shows," Gimple said. "This is not the new mythology for The Walking Dead. This is a new mythology for The Walking Dead universe. The new show is tied into it quite a bit, the movie is as well, but it isn't going to be a driving force throughout all the shows on the universe."

Gimple does emphasize the importance of keeping the shows different, aside from their shared post-apocalyptic mythology.

"Though it is really cool to see how this different corner of the universe operates and the lives that they have been living all this time, it will be these little places that cross," he says. "We've been talking about aspects of next season of World Beyond. There might even be a big aspect of crossover with one of the shows. That's the other part of it is we have these plans, but we've got to execute them. That's sort of next season. We're still finishing up this season." Down the road, more crossover and a smaller universe might just be a possibility.

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The Walking Dead: World Beyond will premiere in the Spring of 2020.