News AMC orders Walking Dead spin off to series

I got to be honest, that's a really clunky title. IMO, World Beyond the Walking Dead would have flowed much better.

 

It's an OK title. I'm a little surprised they didn't stick to the style of Fear the Walking Dead, I always prefer when these kinds of franchise stick to the same style for titles.

 

Yeah, World Beyond the Walking Dead or just Beyond the Walking Dead has a better ring to it.

 

In the latest in a series of interviews with Entertainment Weekly, Scott M. Gimple, the guy in charge of the overall TWD franchise, has said that along with The World Beyond and the movies, they are also working on multiple limited series which will explore current characters' backstories and bring back dead characters, I'm assuming in some kind of flashback stories.
It's a pretty long interview with spoilers for Fear the Walking Dead, which is it's main focus, so here are the relevant quotes.
I don’t know how you could have time for anything else while doing all these shows and the movies, but in terms of other forms, formats, video games, whatever — are there are other things percolating in the Walking Dead universe, even if it’s down the line more?
Oh, absolutely. We’re working on a big push of something I was working on originally and then I got much more focused on the shows in my first year on this job and developing World Beyond and getting the movie going. We really do want to come out with different TV formats, meaning shorter things, and then some event series, limited event series. I’m trying to get together a number of different things that we can show at different times during the year, and this focuses on characters we miss and we lost. It focuses on aspects of that new mythology. It focuses on stories that occur in our universe and have nothing to do with anything. Nothing to do with the shows or the movies, that are just these little zombie tales that happen in our world with our rules and our timeline but are just really great zombie stories, really great stories of the end of the world. I’ve been working on that with a variety of people, and that’s actually proving to be super fun and interesting.

What about filling in some backstories for characters and characters maybe that have already died along the way on Walking Dead or other shows?
That’s exactly what we’re doing. I mean, it isn’t the only thing we’re doing. It’s not like everything is like Gotham, but that’s one of the sort of three kind of categories that we’re tackling. It’s awesome. It’s awesome to be able to play with characters that we’ve lost, and it’s awesome to fill in some of the blanks.
Depending on the characters, this could be interesting.

 

They should do an anthology series like American Horror Story with each season being it's own story

 

It sounds to me like that is more or less what he has in mind for these limited series, just without the single title. Shows like that are already basically a series of miniseries, and are even treated as such by the awards. Whenever cast or crew members from shows like AHS or American Crime Story or Fargo are nominated for it's always in the miniseries/movie catagories.

 

Series premiere April 12 right after The Walking Dead season 10 finale

 

That was a lot sooner than I thought it was going to be airing. They're basically shooting for year round TWD like CBS wants with Trek. I'll probably wait and binge it when the first season is done.

 

They've been saying for months now that 2020 is going to be 42 straight weeks of Walking Dead. Although now that World Beyond's premiere is airing the same night as Walking Dead's season 10 finale, I guess that's only 41 weeks.

Also, through calculations I've been working through, I guess Fear won't have a midseason break this year and will air their sixteen episodes straight through premiere to finale, because I otherwise see no other way they can air all of Fear season 6 and the first half of Walking Dead season 11 within 2020.

 

Walking Dead World Beyond officially confirmed to last two seasons only.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulta...-only-run-for-20-total-episodes/#545c8e6b15d8

 

Wow...way to pre-empt negative criticism predicting its cancellation!

But I guess this is setting up the Rick movies? Hope Fear also will wrap up soon after.

 

They'll still be headlines saying it was cancelled

 

It was pre-cancelled before it moves into it's active cancelled state to it's final cancelled fate. It will never known a time when it was something other than not being cancelled. A true metaphor to what it means to be a human being!


Jason

 

While some see the new series as a test for the strength of the WD franchise going forward, I see it as the proving ground for FTWD; while this season has some interesting plots (and a few all too predictable storylines), the heroes-face-overwhelming-bad-group plot is worn out. Yes, in a lawless world, if you survive long enough, you might encounter near-endless collections of immoral people, but for TV-TWD, they need to give the FTWD characters some other reason to exist.
I would be quite satisfied if none of the WD series never dip into the Woodbury / Terminus / Wolves / Saviors / Whisperers / Black Helicopter group /Virginia well again with another group. Some of the TV franchise's best conflicts had nothing to do with a group as the main antagonists--such as TWD's second season, where the drama and survival horror was intense.

 

Same here. I was tired of that a long time ago.

 

Premiere delayed because of coronavirus, which has halted post-production work on the last few episodes of the season. No new premiere date announced.
https://www.thewrap.com/walking-dead-world-beyond-premiere-date-postponed-amc/

 

Wonder what this looks like now with the shutdowns....

 

Well, we're obviously not getting 41 straight weeks of Walking Dead anymore, given World Beyond's premiere is now postponed. Totally baseless speculation on my part not based on anything substantial and assuming an optimistic scenario regarding coronavirus, I'm guessing World Beyond might premiere in June 7 which would mean a finale on August 9 and Fear season 6 premiering on August 16. I think we could end up getting Fear season 6's all 16 episodes straight through with no midseason break, which would place its finale at the end of November. Walking Dead season 11 would then premiere in February 2021.

Again, just my personal theory based on nothing substantial and indeed, I could end up being completely wrong.

 

New premiere date set on October 4, airing immediately after the season 10 finale of Walking Dead, just like was originally planned. New trailer:

 

After the new trailer and panel, I'm definitely getting very curious about this.