‘The Walking Dead’ Running For 20 Seasons Apparently Isn’t Out Of The Question

AMC

The Walking Dead recently completed its ninth season with season 10 on the way. Double-digit seasons and over 130 episodes would mean the end of the line is nearing for most shows (that aren’t set in Springfield), but The Walking Dead isn’t most shows. For one thing, season nine, led by Angela Kang, was the show’s best in years; also, the premise and constant cast turnover means the series could run for another 10 years. That’s AMC’s hope, at least.

While appearing at the Television Critics Association summer press tour on Thursday, the network’s president of programming David Madden told The Wrap that while he’s “not saying the show will go 20 seasons… I’m not saying it won’t.” There was some worry that ratings would crumble following Andrew Lincoln’s exit, but the “episode that followed his departure dropped one percent from the previous episode. That, we thought, was stunningly strong in terms of a hold. I think the show still has — with Norman Reedus, Melissa McBride, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan — a lot of characters who are truly beloved on the show.”

Kang recently stated that The Walking Dead “still a lot of stories left to tell,” with a “good amount of issues left before the ending of the comic” (Robert Kirkman recently wrapped up his long-running comic series). But even then, once the show catches up with the source material, “things [are] not the same as in the comic, so it’s created branching storylines that don’t exist in the comics.”

It also helps that without Game of Thrones around, The Walking Dead has a case for being the biggest show on television. But even when Thrones was on, “You don’t sneeze at it being number two out of the three billion shows that are on TV.” Only three billion? It feels like five billion, on Netflix alone.

The Walking Dead returns in October.

(Via The Wrap)

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