This should be a surprise to no one but The Walking Dead just won’t die.
Speaking on a quarterly earnings call, AMC’s Ed Carroll said a new Walking Dead spin-off is currently in “active development.’’ He wouldn’t give much more information about it, only noting that they have “hired creative people that have pitched story outlines.” So the new show is in its beginning stages but, rest assured, it’s slowly on its way to your television set.
That would mean we would have not one, not two but three Walking Dead shows. The original series is now in its ninth season and has seen its ratings and star power decline in recent years. The first spin-off, Fear the Walking Dead, still maintains fairly strong ratings though it never matched its predecessor. This new series would probably bring a ratings pop to AMC but who knows if it’ll be as successful as the first two shows.
A major question to ask is this: how many people want another Walking Dead show? Between the original and the spin-off, viewers have been treated to many different angles of the zombie apocalypse. What more is there to say? It almost feels blasphemous to write that because I’m a devout zombie fan. However, this property seems like it might be running out of steam and on its last, decaying legs. That’s expected after nearly a decade on the air but AMC is still happy to be in the Walking Dead business. They have faith and, more importantly, the budget to make the next spin-off work.
Unless this new series looks and feels radically different from both The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead, I reckon many people will greet it with a big “ho-hum.’’ I think audiences don’t want more Walking Dead, they want better Walking Dead.