Though ratings for The Walking Dead have taken a precipitous fall since its peak, they appear to have leveled off now, and have actually seen slight upticks in the latter half of season 9 in spite of the absences of Andrew Lincoln and Lauren Cohan. With Game of Thrones returning in April, The Walking Dead will no longer be the highest rated show on cable. It will have to settle for being one of the highest rated shows on cable. AMC nevertheless believes that ratings for the The Walking Dead and its spin-off Fear the Walking Dead (among the top five rated cable shows of last season) are enough to sustain yet a third The Walking Dead series.
Details are basically non-existent at the moment, save for the fact that a third series is in “active development,” according to Ed Carroll, chief operating officer of AMC. “We’re not yet at a stage where we’ll be announcing its plans to premiere. But we have hired creative people that have pitched story outlines. We feel very good about the development of that series.” Scott Gimple also teased another The Walking Dead spin-off last year.
Those comments came during the company’s fourth-quarter 2018 conference call with media analysts and reporters, and they don’t give us any idea about what kind of spin-off to expect to go along with the Andrew Lincoln movies (which will now also feature Danai Gurira, as she is expected to depart in the series 10th season).
One spin-off possibility that I am intrigued by is a limited series on The Commonwealth, the massive, 50,000 person community the characters on The Walking Dead encounter after The Whisperers War in the comics. In Robert Kirkman’s source material, the characters encounter The Commonwealth after it is already fully formed, but it might be interesting to center a spin-off around its creation after the initial zombie outbreak. A limited series of that nature could theoretically end its run once it intersects with The Walking Dead timeline. The timing of that could present an obstacle, however, because AMC would need to get the show up and running before The Walking Dead arrives at that point in the comics.
Other possibilities include setting a series in another location, perhaps an international location like London or Tokyo in order to take better advantage of the worldwide market for The Walking Dead. Sending Negan away from The Walking Dead could also open up another spin-off possibility.
In the meantime, viewers will have to be content with the creatively revitalized The Walking Dead mothership, which will air five more episodes in its ninth season.
(Via The Wrap)
