Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira Creatively Involved With Rick and Michonne Series
"We owe you the end, the conclusion of this story of Rick and Michonne," Danai Gurira said on stage with Andrew Lincoln at San Diego Comic-Con, where the Walking Dead duo announced they will reunite in a Rick Grimes and Michonne spinoff series for AMC. The as-yet-untitled series, which will replace the long-in-the-works Walking Dead movie trilogy that was announced in 2018, will begin with six episodes in 2023. Lincoln and Gurira are executive producers of the Rick/Michonne spinoff series alongside AMC's Walking Dead Universe chief content officer and Scott Gimple, who will serve as showrunner.
The Walking Dead stars "have been actively involved in conceiving the creative and the continuation of their characters' story," AMC confirmed in a release. The network also included the logline: "Who they were is dead. The only people who can bring them back are each other."
"I, personally, can't wait to get my cowboy boots back on and get the band back together," Lincoln told the Comic-Con crowd. Added Gurira, "He has to find his woman first, because I have them."
"Or you have to find me," Lincoln countered. Gurira replied, "That's true. We have to find each other."
A gravely injured Rick disappeared during The Walking Dead Season 9 episode "What Comes After," where Anne/Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) shuttled him away aboard a Civic Republic Military helicopter. Believed dead by his friends and family for six years, Michonne found evidence Rick survived in Season 10, setting off to find him and bring him home to their children: Judith Grimes (Cailey Fleming) and Rick Jr. (Antony Azor).
Lincoln and Gurira's spinoff is described by AMC as "an epic love story of two characters changed by a changed world."
Reads the official synopsis, "Kept apart by distance. By an unstoppable power. By the ghosts of who they were. Rick and Michonne are thrown into another world, built on a war against the dead... And ultimately, a war against the living. Can they find each other and who they were in a place and situation unlike any they've ever known before? Are they enemies? Lovers? Victims? Victors? Without each other, are they even alive — or will they find that they, too, are the Walking Dead?"
The Rick/Michonne series is one of three announced spinoffs that will continue the characters of the flagship series after the final episodes of The Walking Dead. A Daryl Dixon solo series starring Norman Reedus and Isle of the Dead, starring Lauren Cohan as Maggie and Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Negan, have been announced to premiere in 2023.
The Walking Dead: The Last Episodes begin airing October 2 on AMC and AMC+.
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