We haven’t seen the last of Rick Grimes, it seems… not by a long shot.
Over at AMC HQ, Andrew Lincoln and the Powers That Be are busy prepping a cinematic spinoff for the former Walking Dead favorite, who was last seen during “What Comes After” in the midst of season 9.
Suffice it to say, the mainline Walking Dead series has come an awful long way since the AMC flagship and Andrew Lincoln parted ways, but it seems the latter has finally begun his training for the aforementioned movie spinoff. Over on Instagram (h/t ComicBook.com), the Cotswold Range shared photos of Lincoln wielding a weapon, along with a pic of the British actor standing next to a sign which reads: ‘Danger: Beware of Zombies’. Suddenly, everything feels just right.
The fact that Andrew Lincoln is back in training tells us that the Rick Grimes spinoff movie – the first in a trilogy, it seems – will begin production in earnest sometime this year.
Whatever the case, AMC and The Walking Dead boss Scott Gimple are clearly gunning for a cinematic event when it comes to Rick’s second coming. It’ll also be very different to what has come before, after Gimple told Entertainment Weekly that the forthcoming movie will push TWD into “wild new directions.”
The scale is bigger and the budget is bigger, and it’s The Walking Dead, but heightened, both in the narrative themes, but also in just what we see onscreen. I say heightened, but I should also say it’s also very different. It’s not going to be the exact same thing we saw on television, just larger. We are going in some wild new directions. We really want to deliver [the fans] something special, something worth their trip to the movies. We’re trying to be very deliberate and deliver something new. We’re going to be filling that screen with a brand new world.
The Walking Dead returns to our screens late next month for season 10B, and sure enough, fans can expect some fireworks between Negan and the Whisperer leader Alpha. Entitled “Spies,” it’s locked in for a premiere on February 20th. Don’t. Miss. It.