Your guess is as good as mine when it comes to predicting the release date for the Rick Grimes-focused spinoff movie but believe you me when I sayThe Walking Deadprotagonist’s solo outing is going to be an intense ride. Former series showrunnerScott M. Gimple, now in charge of theWalking Deadfranchise’s content overall, opened up with new details about the Rick Grimes solo movie coming to the big screen. What he revealed hints at that aforementioned tense ride and gives us a better idea of how it will fit into the largerWalking Deadworld, which includes spinoffsFear the Walking Dead, an origin story series, andThe Walking Dead: World Beyond, the forthcoming series focused on the generation of zombie apocalypse survivors.
Speaking withEntertainment Weekly, Gimple shared how the still-untitled Rick Grimes movie will relate back to theWalking Deadworld we’ve come to know and love.
“We are going to continue to tell Rick’s story, and we are going to discover so much of the world through that story. Rick will be challenged in different ways that, in some ways, everything that he’s been through has sort of prepared him for. It’s a much larger world than one that he had been operating in, and that was challenging in and of itself. Now things are heightened, and just as we’re going to the movies —and it is the movies proper, suitably widescreen—we’re going to be filling that screen with a brand new world.”
Gimple also provided some much-needed updates on where the movie is at in the production process. We saw a teaser for the solo movieback in July 2019but since then, it’s been rather quiet. It’s been almost two years since Lincoln’s character Rick leftThe Walking Deadin 2018 and longtime fans of the series are no doubt chomping at the bit for new information. Gimple told EW the script is still being worked on and a director has yet to be secured, implying the film’s production is still in the early stages. Gimple also shared this:
“The scale is bigger and the budget is bigger, and it’sThe Walking Dead, but heightened, both in the narrative themes, but also in just what we see onscreen.I say heightened, but I should also say it’s also very different. It’s not going to be the exact same thing we saw on television, just larger. We are going in some wild new directions. Movies are a different beast than television. Television is like, boom, we’re done. Movies, to calibrate an hour and a half, two hours is no joke, and it’s been a lot of fun, but it’s a real challenge and we take it very seriously for the fans. We really want to deliver them something special, something worth their trip to the movies. We’re trying to be very deliberate and deliver something new.”
No matter what story is written for Rick Grimes' big solo adventure, it’s no doubt going to be epic as it will for sure get a theatrical release. Fingers crossed the movie, in combination with the release ofThe Walking Dead: World Beyond, will help reinvigorate theWalking Deadfanbase in a way that will help us forget about the flagship show’s slow butcontinued viewership dipin recent months.
For more on what’s happening in theWalking Deadfranchise, check out thetrailer for the upcoming spinoffThe Walking Dead: WorldBeyond.
