The COVID-19 outbreak didn’t just delay The Walking Dead’s tenth season finale. It also postponed Andrew Lincoln’s long-awaited return to the franchise as Rick Grimes. Shortly after Lincoln exited the flagship series in season 9, the producers announced they would be branching out into feature-length storytelling with a trilogy of films centering on his character. Ever since the pandemic began earlier this year, the project’s status has been hazy. But during the recent virtual Skybound Xpo (via CBR), Walking Dead co-creator Robert Kirkman assured fans that the first film is still happening.
When viewers last saw Rick, he was being loaded onto a helicopter and flown to an unknown destination. The first of AMC’s upcoming movies will presumably start by revealing where this location is and why Anne/Jadis sent him there. Naturally, this is a big mystery that longtime fans are eager to get to the bottom of. But in Kirkman’s view, it’s not so bad that they have extra time to fine-tune the film’s story.
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“I would say that, if anything, the pandemic is going to make a lot of movies better,” said Kirkman. “I think the Rick Grimes movie chief among them, just because we’re getting a lot more time to cook this thing and make sure it’s perfect.”
Production on The Walking Dead and its various spinoffs remains on hold due to the ongoing health crisis. Despite this, Kirkman insists that there’s “tons of stuff going on behind the scenes.”
“I don’t want anyone to think that we’re just kind of waiting around for this pandemic to end,” Kirkman added.
The first Rick Grimes movie is still without an official title or a release date.
What are you hoping to see from AMC’s upcoming Walking Dead films? Tell us what you think in the comment section below!
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