The Walking Dead franchise is about to be expanded in some exciting new ways. With creator Robert Kirkman moving over to Amazon to develop new projects with his company Skybound Entertainment, showrunner Scott M. Gimple is being promoted to Chief Content Officer. Now, it’s been revealed that his main responsibility will be in creating some spinoffs across various media – including new webseries, video games and perhaps even another fully-fledged TV show.
Gimple made the revelation to The Hollywood Reporter, saying that the crux of the plan is to increase The Walking Dead brand with “traditional stuff, non-traditional stuff, stuff people don’t expect.”
“We’re going to have cool new Walking Dead stuff. We have a bunch of different things in mind. Some things that are really complimentary to the stuff we’re doing now, and some stuff that’s far afield and very different.”
Gimple had more to say on the direction of these projects, too, emphasizing that both new 16-episode spinoffs such as Fear the Walking Dead as well as limited webseries like Flight 462 and Red Machete are being considered. “Those are two very different ends of the spectrum,” as Gimple put it, elaborating further by saying:
“We can do cool stuff in both of those spectrums and there’s other stuff that doesn’t quite fit in those descriptions. There are different approaches to how we tell stories and how long we tell them for and the places we can do them.
I’m hoping to do a variety of different projects that are probably more in line with what we see on TV but maybe in different rhythms and formats and things like that. We’ll still continue to come out with great digital content but I’m excited about the kind of stuff we can do. But I really am talking about all sides of it and I know we’ll have more to talk about soon on that.”
The producer wouldn’t be drawn on which characters might possibly become the star of their own vehicles or what form any of these spinoffs might take, but did note that AMC are “experimenting with new ways to do it.”
“We’re seeing different lengths of seasons and different formats — though I’m not talking about a 37-minute series. I’m talking about different ways to tell stories, possibly with characters we know and possibly with characters we don’t. We’re figuring it all out right now but there’s a ton of stuff that I want to dive into. It’s us organizing it and deciding how to do it, how it all works together. We really have a plan that goes into the future. It’s pretty exciting right now.”
As you would expect, THR confirms that Gimple’s new role is directly due to Kirkman vacating the network, leaving AMC free to appoint a new overseer of the brand to create fresh content. The new showrunner of TWD, meanwhile, will be writer Angela Kang, who’s worked on the series since season 2. Kang is the fourth person to fill the position, following Frank Darabont (1-2), Glen Mazzara (2-3) and Gimple (4-8).
Be sure to catch new episodes of The Walking Dead every Sunday on AMC.
