AMC has announced an upcoming third series set in The Walking Dead TV universe for a 2020 release date from showrunner Matt Negrete (a writer on TWD since 2013).
The Walking Dead will debut its second spin-off series in 2020 with a 10-episode first season, AMC revealed at the New York Summit. The upcoming show has been described as:
“(The upcoming series) will feature 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.”
For more info – check out the official Skybound website HERE.
Stop. Just stop making more Walking Dead shows… I understand that this series, now going into its 10th and hopefully final season before an inevitable crossover special with Fear The Walking Dead, is the show that helped breathe new life into AMC, especially with Breaking Bad and Mad Men coming to an end. However – there is such a thing as overstaying one’s welcome and as great as I think season 9 of The Walking Dead was with new showrunner Angela Kang, she has been dealt some shitty situations with not one, not two but THREE major stars all having left (or about to leave) the series abruptly. The Walking Dead is also inching ever so closely to the current comic book storyline. I had always believed The Walking Dead would last 8 seasons and conclude with the big All Out War storyline. Yet — here we are — still shambling along.
Fear The Walking Dead had huge potential but after Scott Gimple took the reigns over all The Walking Dead TV properties, that series morphed into a sort of dude leftovers from the flagship series in season 5 as Morgan joined the cast and sadly the rest of the original Fear cast was almost completely wiped out, changing the look and tone of the show to have it match up more closely with the original series. The original Fear The Walking Dead centered around strong female protagonists, until the executive producers decided to scrap that idea and now here we are a couple years later with yet ANOTHER spinoff that is geared up to really for real this time feature strong female leads… Hey AMC – you had that chance and you messed it up.
I love zombies and post-apocalyptic epics as much as the next horror buff and I’ve been with The Walking Dead forever – from the start – I was one of the first journalists to cover the show online before anyone else had a clue how successful it would turn out to be. And I’M saying it’s time to start planning the endgame here AMC – come up with new ideas and stop bleeding this property until it has absolutely nothing left to offer. Sure the upcoming THIRD show will be set in the future from the sounds of it – showing a new generation of survivors who were born into this world, but wouldn’t that be a cool concept maybe four or five years AFTER the flagship series is already over? Talk about overkill guys – maybe hire some assholes who can come up with something fresh or Hell – just adapt another comic book to series? There are plenty of amazing shows you could make – Birthright from Skybound being one of them…. Why has nobody pushed that button yet?
If I were the president of AMC – here’s what I would do to finish this thing:
- Fear The Walking Dead Season 6 aka the FINAL season (This summer)
- The Walking Dead Season 10 – aka the FINAL season (This Fall)
- The Crossover series – 3 or 6 episode event series (Summer 2020)
- The Walking Dead Movie #1 (Fall 2021)
Name one dramatic series that has remained consistently strong and powerful that has went further than 10 seasons.
The real struggle would be finding one that remains strong past 8 seasons really. Most great TV series wrap up by their eighth season and if anything – prolonging the show can result in the diminishing of its legacy – see Dexter for a fine example. Breaking Bad ended after five seasons, The Sopranos was six, Banshee was four, Black Sails was four, Sons of Anarchy was eight, Game of Thrones will be eight – the list of epic dramas wrapping up at that time goes on and on. I love TWD – but its time to start planning for something NEW people.