AMC has greenlit a third Walking Dead series that is set to begin production this summer in Virginia. The new, untitled series, which will have a 10-episode first season, will air in 2020.
The series was co-created by Walking Dead chief content officer Scott M. Gimple and longtime TWD writer Matt Negrete, who will also serve as showrunner. Jordan Vogt-Roberts (Kong: Skull Island) is directing the pilot.
Further Reading: How The Walking Dead’s Rick Grimes Will Return
“Showing audiences an unseen pocket of The Walking Dead universe steeped in a new mythology is a very cool way to celebrate a ‘Decade of the Dead’ on TV and over fifteen years of Robert Kirkman’s brilliant comic,” Gimple said in the press release. “Matt Negrete is one of the best writer-producers in TWD’s long history — I’m thrilled to be working beside him to tell stories unlike we’ve seen before, taking our first step into an even larger world.”
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The Walking Dead franchise has been spreading like an unstoppable virulent outbreak over the past year. Beyond the flagship series and the first spinoff series, Fear the Walking Dead, which will begin its fifth season in June, there are also three movies in the works. The first will star Andrew Lincoln, who will reprise his role as Rick Grimes, the franchise’s main protagonist. The first movie is also set to begin production this year. Meanwhile, the flagship itself will air its 10th season later this fall.
Until then, here’s everything else we know about the new series:
The Walking Dead Spinoff Cast
The full cast of the third Walking Dead series was revealed at SDCC 2019, although we don’t know much about their specific characters besides their names:
Aliyah Royale – Iris
Annet Mahendru – Huck
Alexa Mansour – Hope
Nicolas Cantu – Elton
Hal Cumpston – Silas
The Walking Dead Spinoff Story
According to a press release, the series will follow “two young female protagonists and focus on the first generation to come-of-age in the apocalypse as we know it. Some will become heroes. Some will become villains. In the end, all of them will be changed forever. Grown-up and cemented in their identities, both good and bad.”
Walking Dead chief content officer Scott M. Gimple elaborated on the plot at SDCC 2019: “There’s a big secret about the Walking Dead universe. All these years we’ve just seen a tiny sliver of the Walking Dead world. There’s a whole lot of world out there. The big secret is that all along, there have been other civilizations that survived the apocalypse. We saw hints of that in season seven of The Walking Dead and again in [Fear the Walking Dead‘s] “The End of Everything,” and now we’re about to show a lot more of the world in a bunch of different projects.”
The civilization these young characters inhabit is one that hasn’t had to struggle nearly as much as the ones we’ve seen so far.
“These kids can grow up in a place of comfort and security, but they leave everything on a dangerous quest, and are being pursued by adults on their own,” Gimple said of the setup of the show. “We’re going to open up a whole new world of TWD.”
Is this “place of comfort” the long-teased Commonwealth from the comics? Time will tell.
We’ll keep you updated on this new series and everything else The Walking Dead as we hear it.
Read and download the Den of Geek SDCC 2019 Special Edition Magazine right here!
John Saavedra is an associate editor at Den of Geek. Read more of his work here. Follow him on Twitter @johnsjr9.