Over this past weekend, the teams behind the various The Walking Dead series were featured on their own panels at the New York Comic Con virtually. The Walking Dead universe featured a panel of Chief Content Officer Scott Gimple (FlashForward), showrunner for The Walking Dead Angela Kang (Terriers), Matt Negrete (Kim Possible, White Collar) for The Walking Dead: World Beyond, and Andrew Chambliss (Once Upon a Time) and Ian Goldberg (Eli) for Fear the Walking Dead to discuss the future for the zombie universe and the end of its parent show.
The Walking Dead recently revealed that its upcoming eleventh season will be its final one and will wrap up in 2022. However, production fears over the COVID-19 pandemic prompted a lot of questions about shooting a zombie invasion series successfully in accordance with public health guidelines. Kang discusses the challenge that will face them when they return to shoot season eleven. “The big difference is that when we come back we usually do a giant season opener, and there’s hordes and hordes of zombies and they’re crammed in spaces doing tonnes of action. It’s not going to be that kind of thing because we can’t have 300 zombie extras and people with faces smashed together with mouths all over the places. But the thing that is really cool is that we’ve had to think outside the box and how to make things still feel really scary, while being a little more cognizant of how many people are in a scene,” said Kang on the showrunner panel. For more information on the parent show’s future, check out the cast panel below:
The Walking Dead spinoff series, The Walking Dead: World Beyond, premiered on AMC on October 4 and will consist of two, ten-episode seasons. The spinoff begins a decade after day zero in middle America and centers on the teenagers that have come to live and grow up as the first generation in the new world. Gimple gave a surprise connection between this new series and the parent show’s former protagonist, Rick Grimes, who was kidnapped and vanished from the parent show in season nine. “The show [World Beyond] obviously serves as an introduction to the organization or civilization that Rick has gotten somehow tied up in,” said Gimple. Check out the full half-hour panel dedicated to this spinoff below:
In terms of the other spinoff series, Fear the Walking Dead already announced that its sixth season will be of an anthology format, aiming to focus on group of individual characters in sole episodes. Chambliss and Goldberg commented on a reason for shifting the narrative storytelling for the new season which premieres October 11. “Some of our favorite episodes of The Walking Dead and Fear are really those episodes that can focus on one character or two characters and really do a deep dive, take them on a complete journey from the beginning of the episode to the end, and really see some real character growth,” said Chambliss via Digital Spy. Check out the full panel on the established spinoff series below:
As for its parent show, The Walking Dead has created a universe that expanded across the country and introduced various characters that tends to have fans questioning or theorizing crossover opportunities. “There’s something we’re working on that’s kind of far afield and has some crossover-y elements to it. There really is a chance there’s a far-flung story. There are plans,” said Gimple during the showrunner panel. Take a peek at The Walking Dead universe’s respective showrunners discuss the future for their series below: