Rick Grimes may have departed for good from AMC’s The Walking Dead during season 9, but the franchise is far from done with his story. Back in November 2018, TWD‘s chief content officer Scott Gimple told The Hollywood Reporter that the beloved character would be at the center of at least three feature films set in the show’s universe. Then, during San Diego Comic-Con 2019, AMC and Universal Pictures released a teaser for the first film, promising that Rick Grimes would return “only in theaters” at an unspecified date.
Now, Gimple has finally shared a few more details about the as-yet-unnamed movie. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, he revealed that they’re “currently refining” the script and have yet to choose a director. He also added that, as of right now, the plan is still for actor Andrew Lincoln to reprise his role in a trilogy of films. Most significantly, he teased that the film will go in “some wild new directions.” Here’s what we think those could be.
Spoilers ahead for season 9, episode 5 of The Walking Dead.
In the interview, Gimple revealed that the movie would bring Rick to a world beyond what we’ve seen in the flagship show:
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 wide screen — we’re going to be filling that screen with a brand new world.
Now, when we last saw Rick, he was being taken off by a helicopter emblazoned with a mysterious insignia: three interlocking rings, a symbol that also pops up in Fear the Walking Dead, connected to a mysterious (not to mention terrifying) organization possibly called “CRM” that is obsessed with “the future.”
This symbol/organization also plays a prominent role in the upcoming TWD spin-off show, World Beyond, which takes place ten years after the walkers arrived and kicked off the apocalypse. As ComicBook.com notes, that places Rick’s disappearance via copter around 6 years before World Beyond, implying heavily that at least one of the three films will play a huge role in affecting the events of the third TWD show.
Gimple confirmed as much back in 2018. In his interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he revealed the new movies will “explore the period between Rick’s helicopter rescue and the years-later time jump that was featured at the end of Sunday’s episode — and stretch beyond that period,” with each film telling “a complete story about Rick.”
“It is about who he is and who he’s going to be — and certainly how he deals with the situation he’s in,” Gimple teased then, to THR. “We know Rick Grimes; he would want to be home.”
Gimple also, notably, confirmed that the first film will a.) feature Rick’s POV and b.) explore the “vast mythology” behind the CRM/three-rings organization. Putting two and two together, this likely means that the first TWD movie will largely feature Rick as he attempts to escape the clutches of the mysterious group, only to falter (and possibly even join them) as he uncovers a twist that calls into question everything he knows. (We’re gonna guess…they created the zombie virus? No, wait Robert Kirkman said that wasn’t an important plot point. Okay then, maybe…CRM figured out how to weaponize it, and they use it to target communities they don’t like, and that’s why there are still zombies around 10 years later?) Rick’s actions could then lead to continued success of the organization, as we can see in the trailer for The Walking Dead: World Beyond.
But of course, this is all just speculation. We’ll know more when World Beyond debuts on AMC next spring, and when we get a release date for the first film.
This sounds like hubris. It may turn out to be a good movie. Personally, I’d never go to see a WD movie in a theater, especially if Gimple is involved. There was so much stupidity in the scripts and in Rick’s decisions on screen that it made me feel dumber just watching that crap (that’s a critical term).
Just don’t see this taking off at all. Maybe it will be a one and done after the first fails.
Also, Rick was not at all a “beloved character” before he made his exit. He was actively hated and viewers wanted him to die.
I gotta agree with Sunspear. I loved the comics and watched the show despite it annoying me over and over with the writing making the characters do dumb things just for plot purposes. I think it was the only show I was ‘hate watching’. I finally quit partway into the Rick’s last season.
I would love to see Rick return and am a big big fan. The show is empty without him. I am looking s-o forward to seeing The 3 movies.
He was not a hated character, he was changing his atitude all the time and that did not make sense but still, Never have i hated watching him.
I stuck with the show for a long time because I found that for every lame attempt at a plot twist and every stupid decision a character made, there were characters I liked and there would be an occasional moment of clever storytelling. This ended completely for me sometime during the Negan saga, when the show became incredibly repetitive and frustrating. I’m not excited to see a trilogy of films in this universe, particularly since it sounds like it’s just going to be another secretive-group-of-human-baddies vs. Rick story.