'The Walking Dead': Will Andrew Lincoln's Rick Grimes movie trilogy be the final project in the universe?
Andrew Lincoln's return to the role of Rick Grimes is one of the most anticipated events in 'The Walking Dead' franchise. And now a recent update on the planned movie trilogy suggests that the project might just be the final bowing out for the whole 'Walking Dead' universe. While the movie trilogy has reportedly been in the works since 2019, we're not close to a release date. Moreover, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, all projects have been further delayed.
'The Walking Dead' Universe chief content officer Scott Gimple has revealed that they are still figuring out the movie even now. "So much of what we've been doing is honing and tweaking and experimenting, and we're just in the lab with it," Gimple told Comic Book. If this is true, it could be over a year before we see the first of these movies in theaters. And that could make this trilogy the final installment in the franchise.
Since it began airing on AMC in 2010, 'The Walking Dead' has covered most of the narrative from its source material, the comic book series of the same name by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard. The show is expected to wrap up in another season or two and that's probably for the best.
Considering we've already had a decade's worth of 'Walking Dead' content, it's really just a matter of time before fatigue sets in and the franchise's fan following runs dry. The show has to end at some point and we're sure the creators would rather finish while the going is good instead of waiting till the point of exhaustion. Once 'The Walking Dead' ends, its spinoff series 'Fear the Walking Dead' won't be too far behind. While the show does have the benefit of being completely original and therefore unrestricted by the source material, it's not nearly as popular as its parent show and is unlikely to run much longer than 'TWD'.
Then there is the newest spinoff 'The Walking Dead: World Beyond', which is already planned as a two-season limited series. That series is expected to feature the Civic Republic Military (CRM) in a major way. The CRM is right now the biggest thread connecting the independent shows and they are expected to be a huge part of the planned movie trilogy. So chances are that the remaining seasons of the shows will establish what exactly the CRM is, thus allowing the trilogy to utilize them as major players.
Of course, right now we don't even know when the first movie might come out. But the way things are shaping up, it's almost certain that it will be the project that concludes this expansive franchise, at least for now.
