AMC’s The Walking Dead will continue to shamble on: the network announced that it’s greenlit a new series in the zombie franchise, Tales from the Walking Dead, an anthology series that will tell a bunch of standalone stories set within the world.
According to Deadline, the first six-episode series will go into production next year, and each episode will “focus on new and established characters set in the world of the original series.” The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead screenwriter Channing Powell will serve as showrunner.
In a statement to the outlet, AMC Networks and AMC Studios president Dan McDermott cited the popularity of shows like CBS’s The Twilight Zone and Channel 4 / Netflix’s Black Mirror as inspiration for the series. “We see so much potential for a wide range of rich and compelling storytelling in this world,” he explained, “and the episodic anthology format of Tales of the Walking Dead will give us the flexibility to entertain existing fans and also offer an entry point for new viewers, especially on streaming platforms.”
The series will come after the network’s main flagship series comes to an end next year—the current eleventh season is the show’s last. That doesn’t mean the franchise is over, however: Tales from the Walking Dead will join a handful of shows like Fear the Walking Dead, an untitled spinoff series featuring Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) and Carol Peletier (Melissa McBride), as well as a spinoff movie trilogy featuring the show’s original hero Rick Grimes.
A new spinoff for the franchise isn’t too surprising. A couple of years ago, I spoke with Paul Vigna, the author of Guts: The Anatomy of The Walking Dead, who noted that the original series wouldn’t last forever, because it’s hard for a series to maintain a creative streak beyond a decade. But, the show has established a massive world and situation for its characters, and a series of standalone episodes telling smaller stories in the world might breathe a bit of life into the franchise.
