AMC is Working on Even More Spin-offs of ‘The Walking Dead’
Though still a hit show, The Walking Dead has been faltering a little lately. It’s clear the series has problems and ratings have begun slipping. Despite this, the franchise doesn’t look like it’s dying out any time soon, with prequel series Fear the Walking Dead‘s fourth season set to air in April and AMC planning more spin-offs of the series.
There’s been a staff reshuffling in the creative team, with Angela Kang taking over as showrunner. Current showrunner Scott M. Gimple will become chief content officer of the franchise and oversee all The Walking Dead projects. Talking to The Hollywood Reporter, he made it clear AMC had more to offer in the franchise:
“We’re going to be doing traditional stuff, non-traditional stuff, stuff people don’t expect. But yes, definitely scripted. The odds of unscripted are very remote. But I’m not going to say no. 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.”
He went on to suggest they would be experimenting with new stories and formats, perhaps moving away from TV:
“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. We’re 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.”
Despite Gimple’s frustratingly vague answer, it’s obvious The Walking Dead is in for the long haul. Many fans of the series will be excited to hear that, but others are already feeling the fatigue of the long-running-series. There’s always room to explore new ways of telling an undead apocalypse story, but the test will be to see if Gimple can keep expanding the idea while maintaining the quality of the original series.
