The Walking Dead franchise will be getting its first movie spinoffs in the near future. We’ve known that Andrew Lincoln would be starring in his own film trilogy since he bowed out of the main show last fall, but it still came as a shock when AMC announced at Comic-Con last weekend that the movies would be exclusive to theaters and not released on the network as most assumed.
We’ve previously had this idea teased before, but apparently it wasn’t the plan all along. AMC programming chief David Madden explained to The Wrap that the expectation was that the movies would land either on TV or online, so the fact that TWD is heading to theaters is “a big dream” come true.
“It could’ve ended up with us [on AMC], it could’ve ended up at a streaming platform. It’s a big dream to have a current TV show that is still on the air to have a feature film incarnation. That doesn’t happen very often.”
Clearly, Madden’s thrilled by the opportunity, but the announcement has caused some mixed reactions from fans. Some are wondering if folks will have sufficient interest in seeing a TWD movie in cinemas when the TV show is still going. Likewise, others are irate over the fact that the franchise is now being expanded onto another platform that they have to pay extra for. Especially as the films were originally discussed as dropping on cable.
Of course, a whole lot of fans are ecstatic about the news, too. We don’t have any concrete story details just yet, but the short promo that accompanied the announcement may have told us where Rick Grimes will have been taken since we last saw him. The skyline glimpsed in the teaser looks a lot like Philadelphia, meaning Rick’s a long way from home.
The first Walking Dead movie is expected to arrive in 2020, but it’s yet to land an official release date. Season 10, meanwhile, premieres on AMC in October.
