There's really limitless potential for AMC to expand the The Walking Dead franchise. There are a lot of stories that could be told within a zombie apocalypse, and there could be spin-offs set all over the world. While I'd prefer they just focus on improving the quality of the original show and getting it back on track, I can understand their desire to keep widening the scope of the property.
When it was announced that Angela Kang would be taking over as The Walking Dead showrunner next season while current showrunner Scott M. Gimple moves up to become "chief content officer" of the franchise, overseeing all Walking Dead projects, it was clear that there are more spin-offs beyond Fear the Walking Dead in the works.
Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Gimple confirmed that AMC is looking to give us more than just The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead:
We're going to be doing traditional stuff, non-traditional stuff, stuff people don't expect. But yes, definitely scripted. The odds of unscripted are very remote. But I'm not going to say no. We're going to have cool new Walking Dead stuff. We have a bunch of different things in mind. Some things that are really complimentary to the stuff we're doing now and some stuff that's far afield and very different."
These Walking Dead expansions won't necessarily just be taking the form of TV shows, either. There are a variety of platforms and many different ways this "new Walking Dead stuff" could be reaching fans:
There are different approaches to how we tell stories and how long we tell them for and the places we can do them. I'm hoping to do a variety of different projects that are probably more in line with what we see on TV but maybe in different rhythms and formats and things like that. We'll still continue to come out with great digital content but I'm excited about the kind of stuff we can do. But I really am talking about all sides of it and I know we'll have more to talk about soon on that. We're experimenting with new ways to do it. We're seeing different lengths of seasons and different formats — though I'm not talking about a 37-minute series. I'm talking about different ways to tell stories, possibly with characters we know and possibly with characters we don't. We're figuring it all out right now but there's a ton of stuff that I want to dive into. It's us organizing it and deciding how to do it, how it all works together. We really have a plan that goes into the future. It's pretty exciting right now."
Those are some maddeningly vague answers that really tell you absolutely nothing, but what it comes down to is – Gimple and AMC are planning to get as much as they can out of the Walking Dead concept, and we're going to be seeing a whole lot more stuff set in this zombie-infested world.
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