What comes after The Walking Dead? Ending an 11-season run after 177 episodes, AMC Networks laid the mothership series to rest with its Nov. 20th “Rest in Peace” series finale. But The Walking Dead Universe lives on. Following two seasons of the limited series The Walking Dead: World Beyond, a six-episode first season of the anthology series Tales of the Walking Dead, and the upcoming eighth season of the original spin-off Fear the Walking Dead, chief content officer Scott M. Gimple is overseeing the cable channel’s franchise expansion with three new Walking Dead shows already announced to premiere in 2023 on AMC and AMC+.
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The spin-offs will follow Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) into post-apocalyptic New York in The Walking Dead: Dead City, find Daryl (Norman Reedus) stranded overseas in France in The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, and reunite Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) in an epic love story told in The Walking Dead: Rick & Michonne.
In an interview with the AMC Blog, Gimple confirmed there are plans to continue the franchise beyond the three sequel series to the original show. The focus now is on launching this wave of The Walking Dead spin-off shows.
“I will say, I’m hoping these are the first stories and characters we explore, and I really hope we do more,” Gimple said, also revealing plans to explore old characters on the episodic anthology Tales of the Walking Dead. “I hope we get to do that eventually and I really, really do want to get into these other characters and other mythologies and other situations, so I’m hoping these are the first.”
The ambition is to produce “more Tales episodes or limited series or spin-offs,” Gimple said. “I have a lot of dreams of doing more. Right now, we’re concentrating on these, but give us a little while, and I hope that we can jump into other characters.”
Gimple continued: “In some ways, we are working on some, but we’re not urgently working on them. We want to get these shows up on their feet and then start widening out the world again.”
Because The Walking Dead series finale closed out one chapter while opening new ones, Gimple teased viewers “very well might” see surviving characters return and crossover into the Daryl, Maggie/Negan, and Rick/Michonne spin-offs.
“We are trying to have this continuous world,” Gimple said. “The thing about The Walking Dead that makes it The Walking Dead are the characters. We love these characters and I really want to see more of them and work with more of them.”
The franchise has experimented with canon web-isodes and other short-form series like The Walking Dead: Red Machete and Fear the Walking Dead: Flight 462, which aired during commercial breaks in episodes of The Walking Dead. Most recently, the 40-minute spin-off special Dead in the Water tied into Fear as a prequel to its sixth season.
The Walking Dead: Dead City, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, and The Walking Dead: Rick & Michonne are all slated to premiere in 2023 on AMC and AMC+.
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