The Walking Dead might get tooned up and tuned up in Tales of the Walking Dead, the episodic anthology spinoff in development at AMC Networks. One of two new Walking Dead spinoffs announced by the network in September, Tales tells all-new stories about characters both familiar and not, including those who have already died on The Walking Dead. Characters who survive the mothership series ending with its eleventh season in 2022 are also likely to return in Tales of the Walking Dead, which will experiment with various types of genre and format as it explores fresh corners of the Walking Dead Universe:
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“Some will be horror stories, some will be black comedy, some will be adventures,” Scott Gimple, the chief content officer of TWD and creator of Tales, says in the latest issue of Emmy Magazine. “Some might use animation. We could have music-driven episodes.”
The live-action franchise dabbled with animated segments in The Walking Dead: Red Machete, a six-part short-form web series documenting the history of the red-handled machete eventually used by Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) to execute Gareth (Andrew J. West) in The Walking Dead season 5.
At the heart of this anything-goes approach: telling a wide range of zombie stories set against the backdrop of The Walking Dead.
Episodes will be different from week to week, making Tales a grab-bag made up of stories that “we just couldn’t tell on any of the other shows. And to be different from each other, week to week,” Gimple previously told The Los Angeles Times. Along with a revolving roster of genres, Tales explores “different time periods in the apocalypse. Different kinds of characters. Some episodes that have one character and maybe a lot of dead people.”
Not only will Tales surprise from week to week, even bringing fans new types of crossovers, but it will also take a deeper look at fan-favorites like Abraham Ford (Michael Cudlitz) as well as one-off characters like Eastman (John Carroll Lynch).
“We have the Carol/Daryl show, which in some ways is the centerpiece of what’s moving forward,” Gimple recently told ComicBook.com about the Walking Dead slate from 2022 onwards. “Tales on the other hand is completely different. There isn’t even a regular cast to that show. I think there’s gonna be a mix of old favorites in various ways, whether they be specials, whether they be mini-series, whether they be on Tales, and then things like Carol and Daryl, and rolled out in a way that we’re not over-saturating people with it, but letting people have a steady flow of The Walking Dead in their lives. That’s our goal.”
Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter for all things TWD. The Walking Dead returns with new episodes on February 28, 2021, on AMC.
