The Walking Dead - Season 5 and onwards

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Andrew Lincoln is keeping Georgia on his mind. The Rick Grimes actor says he wishes he'd "never left" the home state of The Walking Dead, where the English actor filmed nine seasons of the zombie drama. When Lincoln decided to leave the mothership series early into season 9, flying Rick away from The Walking Dead aboard a helicopter piloted by the Civic Republic Military, the father of two explained he wished to spend more time with family overseas. As Lincoln prepares to return to the Walking Dead Universe in the spin-off feature film he expects to shoot in spring 2021, the Walking Dead star quips it was a "terrible decision" to leave:

"I didn't know what the South was. I'd never been to the South. And then I went to Georgia, and I fell in love with this extraordinary city, Atlanta," Lincoln said during a live Walking Dead cast reunion and fundraiser for the Georgia Senate Victory Fund on Sunday. "Living and working in the South was extraordinary ... [Georgia is] the most extraordinarily progressive place I've ever been in my life, and that was 12 years ago."

The live-streamed virtual fundraiser reunited Lincoln with former co-stars Danai Gurira (Michonne), Norman Reedus (Daryl), Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Negan), Lennie James (Morgan), Christian Serratos (Rosita), and Sonequa Martin-Green (Sasha) in support of Georgia Senate candidates Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.

"You guys I love. I mean, the connection that we have to the land, to the place, to the people," Lincoln told his castmates. "Arthur — my 10-year-old son — won't let me take a job unless it's in Georgia now (laughs). He just misses it. He goes, 'Take me back there!' I came back home for the kids, and now they're sick of me, and I wish I'd never left. It was a terrible decision (laughs)."

It's unclear whether AMC Networks and Skybound Entertainment intend to film the untitled Walking Dead Movie in Georgia, where the Walking Dead cast recently completed a six-week shoot on the new extended season 10 episodes airing in early 2021. Lincoln is currently in London playing Ebenezer Scrooge in live-streamed performances of A Christmas Carol.

"I mean, there's only so many sports days you can miss and really call yourself a father, so I think it was time for me to get back for some important days and just be around and have some continuity back home," Lincoln told Access ahead of his Walking Dead exit in 2018.

Lincoln returned to The Walking Dead's Georgia set during season 9 filming to shadow directors ahead of his planned season 10 directorial debut on the series, but scheduling conflicts prevented Lincoln from stepping behind the camera. Showrunner Angela Kang previously said the door is always open for Lincoln to return to The Walking Dead "any time" he wants, but the Rick Grimes actor is not expected to appear in the eleventh and final season airing between 2021 and 2022.

Andrew Lincoln Reunites With The Walking Dead Cast: “I Wish I'd Never Left”

Andrew Lincoln is keeping Georgia on his mind. The Rick Grimes actor says he wishes he'd 'never [...]

comicbook.com

 

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[Judderman]

Good to see it returning. The trailer looks particularly comic book in style. Maybe trying to appeal more to the graphic novel fans?

 

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Maybe trying to appeal more to the graphic novel fans?

I think they are trying to appeal to any fans that they have left, to show them that the good stuff is coming.

 

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You can now find TWD in the Netflix. All 9 seasons.

 

[Glaysher]

You can now find TWD in the Netflix. All 9 seasons.

Not here (UK) you can't

 

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Not here (UK) you can't

I was on VPN last night and you're right. It's not there. Apologies for misinformation.

 

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The Walking Dead's Lauren Cohan Reveals Photo From Glenn and Abraham's Death Dinner

For Conan O'Brien, who has become close with former The Walking Dead star Steven Yeun, tonight's [...]

comicbook.com

 

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Hershel Rhee might be little, but TV mom Lauren Cohan says series newcomer Kien Michael Spiller brings a big amount of good to The Walking Dead. Years after we last saw Littler Hershel (Peyton Lockridge) — he was a baby in the Season 9 episode "The Obliged," which aired in 2018 — Maggie (Cohan) and a now eight-year-old Hershel had their homecoming in Sunday's extended Season 10 premiere, "Home Sweet Home." Maggie's reunion with her old friends was spoiled by the sight of Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), who is walking around free after killing her son's father Glenn (Steven Yeun), but Cohan says Spiller's Hershel is a bright spot in the darkness still to come.

"He is so entertaining. He is just the best conversationalist. He has so many theories about what you would really do in this situation. It requires so few prompts for me. He's got a lot of ideas about everything. It's very entertaining," Cohan told Entertainment Weekly about her young co-star. "We have so much dead time between setups and stuff sometimes, and he's just really funny. He's just a really, really bright and funny kid."

Cohan added, "[Showrunner Angela Kang] wanted somebody that carried on this spirit of Glenn, and it was a bright spot for the characters on the show. And yeah, we have a lot of good to come with him. It's going to be fun."

Lauren Cohan Says Maggie’s Son Hershel Rhee Brings “A Lot of Good” to The Walking Dead

Hershel Rhee might be little, but TV mom Lauren Cohan says series newcomer Kien Michael Spiller [...]

comicbook.com

 

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The Reapers return as the epic end of The Walking Dead begins. The 24-episode Final Season, kicking off with a two-part season premiere August 22 on AMC, sees the collective communities living as one behind the ravaged walls of an Alexandria at risk of collapse after the Whisperer War. Among them are Maggie Rhee (Lauren Cohan) and her new group of survivors, the Wardens, who are the would-be prey of masked marauders they call the Reapers. The human-hunting villains attacked Maggie and Daryl (Norman Reedus) in "Home Sweet Home," and the survivors will fear the Reapers when The Walking Dead lives again:


"This Attacker they meet in the woods, we know that this is part of the backstory of what Maggie's been up to up until this point. There's a lot of clues there about who this person is, even though he's mysterious and doesn't say much," executive producer and showrunner Angela Kang said on Talking Dead of the camouflaged Reaper (Mike Whinnet) who attacks Maggie and Daryl in the extended Season 10. "But clearly [he] has a high level of training, is an excellent fighter — there's a moment where he is shot with a bolt and he just snaps it off and keeps going — and this is one guy in the woods that takes out multiple people. He gets Maggie and Daryl, who are two of our strongest characters, into a bind in a really dangerous situation."

The Walking Dead Fears the Reapers in Final Season Teaser: "The End Begins"

The Reapers return as the epic end of The Walking Dead begins. The 24-episode Final Season, [...]

comicbook.com

So we were right to speculate on the Reapers, but the thing is they have nothing to do with the Civil Republic or with the Commonwealth. It is more likely that they are the Writers own invention and it speak more about the factions that survived the apocalypse. But it also speaks that these people had access to things that were beyond the scope of normal people.

It might be a possibility that the Whisperers knew the group and since the wipeout, the Pope is related to Alpha or Beta and hence the kill-order was issued. Thing is, the Rickland cannot survive this onslaught and therefore it might be a device that drives our characters to the hands of Civil Republic AKA the Helicopter People AKA the Commonwealth.

But there is also another chance and that is, The Reapers are Civil Republic opponent and the Pope saw the Helicopter People moving into rescue the survivors of the Rickland so they needed to strike first, and strike hard to finish them off before they could be melted into the Commonwealth.

Fear made Teddy the big baddy and allowed him to threaten with the Nuclear Armageddon. I already pointed out that it was a fizzle as it's not going to cause a nuclear winter, for there not being enough of boom to put enough of soot in the atmosphere to cause the temperature drop.

In the Kirkman's comics, the winter is a really bad time for the zombies as they keep freezing. In the TWD they were slowed down. But what I'm trying to say here is that the producers need a credible, persistent threat to move characters from ASZ to the arms of the Helicopter people.

But the question is, are the Helicopter People good or bad?

 

[nixie]

Looks like we have at least three factions who have access to pre walker technology.
Way I see it they've hidden in secret locations for a number of years instead of grouping together, a lot of death could have been prevented if they'd used their resources to destroy the dead and rebuild the world, not waging war on each other.

Instead we are seeing humanity at its worse, look after their own and to hell with everyone else. They probably hid in the hope that the walkers would eventually decay and they could then swoop in and enslave whoever was left.

 

[Judderman]

The trailer doesn't show anything that happens really. Good that it doesn't spoil things...but just showing characters posing isn't much of substance.

They should have at least a minute of farm work simulation Before a gang/walkers spoil it.

 

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The Walking Dead Universe Book Cover Revealed by AMC Networks

AMC Networks, Skybound Entertainment, and Image Comics revealed the new cover to the book The Art of AMC’s The Walking Dead Universe from illustrator Brian Rood.

gizmodo.com

 

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Frank Darabont, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker behind The Shawshank Redemption, was a key figure in bringing The Walking Dead to AMC way back in 2010. A few years later though, the showrunner and executive producer realized he wasn’t compensated properly for his stake in the show, and a lawsuit was filed.

Well, multiple lawsuits and several twists and turns later, AMC has now agreed to pay a $200 million settlement to Darabont over his dispute, which claimed the network “had used shady accounting to short them on profits,” according to the Hollywood Reporter.

The news was revealed as part of AMC’s report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “The Settlement Agreement provides for a cash payment of $200 million (the ‘Settlement Payment’) to the plaintiffs and future revenue sharing related to certain future streaming exhibition of The Walking Dead and Fear The Walking Dead,” the statement reads. It later revealed $143 million of it was for “the extinguishment of Plaintiffs’ rights to any compensation in connection with The Walking Dead and any related programs and the dismissal of the actions” and that $57 million was for “ordinary course accrued participations.” Basically, AMC was paying $200 million to settle past, and cover any future, earnings Darabont would have made on the show.

Which is, obviously, a lot of money. But it’s also just the settlement. Though this case is now over, that means, hypothetically, if this lawsuit made it further down the road and AMC was eventually found to have actually lied about these things, it probably would have had to pay way more. (At one point Darabont said $280 million.) And that’s just a hint at how incredibly profitable this show has been, and continues to be. Plus, this isn’t the end for the network. Original comic creator Robert Kirkman has a similar lawsuit that’s still pending.

Walking Dead Lawsuit Ends in $200 Million Settlement

After 11 years, AMC has agreed to pay a $200 million settlement to Frank Darabont over his dispute, originally filed in 2010, that he wasn’t being compensated properly for his stake in hit zombie series The Walking Dead.

gizmodo.com

 

[Judderman]

Wow, can't blame AMC for adding more seasons than necessary when they are getting the kind of profit that implies.
I hope Darabont contributed well to get that tally!

 

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Wow, can't blame AMC for adding more seasons than necessary when they are getting the kind of profit that implies.
I hope Darabont contributed well to get that tally!

He has, probably more than we know. But the thing about the profit, I posted a piece about SW poster costing around fifty dollars in the Mandalorian forum. Somebody asked how many people would buy it? I said a hundred million.

He claimed that there was no that amount of people in the world who would watch SW. It turned out that recently they went well past that hundred million subscriber line. So yeah, they made a lot of money.

 

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After taking a swing at a Negan origin story to end Season 10 of The Walking Dead, actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan knows fans still love to hate the ex-villain-turned-anti-hero. But the biggest Negan hater of them all is the widowed Maggie (Lauren Cohan), now calling a tattered Alexandria home sweet home after an undercover Negan helped Alpha (Samantha Morton) and the Whisperers burn down the Hilltop. As she fights for a future for her son Hershel Rhee (Kien Michael Spiller) — the child that Negan's Lucille'd victim, Glenn (Steven Yeun), never got to meet — Maggie must once again step up as a leader of a group that begrudgingly counts Negan as a member.

"I don't know if ['Here's Negan'] will ever sway the people that hate Negan. I think they're just always gonna hate Negan," Morgan said of the Season 10 prequel episode during The Walking Dead's Season 11 panel at virtual San Diego Comic-Con. "I think if there were people on the fence, that may have turned them a little bit, but I think the opportunity to do that and tell that story was exceedingly special."

Filming the episode mid-pandemic with wife Hilarie Burton Morgan, who played Negan's cancer-stricken wife Lucille, was "certainly one of the highlights of my time here on The Walking Dead, which has been many a moon now," added Morgan. "I didn't know that I would be here this long."

Negan spent most of Season 9 behind bars, serving a solitary life sentence commuted by Carol (Melissa McBride) when she freed him to assassinate Alpha and help end the Whisperer War in Season 10. In Season 11, Negan is a free man but persona non grata in the otherwise tight-knit group of survivors trying to rebuild their devastated community.

"I think there's definitely an evolution of Negan. But I would be hard-pressed to say that old Negan will ever disappear, I think that will always be a part of who he is," Morgan said. "But I think that at this point, he is trying everything he can to kind of fit in with this group of people. And I think he was doing okay until Maggie came back, and now it's a whole new ball game for him, and one that he's trying to figure out. But I think at a certain point, there's just too much tension between the two of them. So we'll see what happens."

Jeffrey Dean Morgan Teases Tension With Maggie and Negan’s Evolution in The Walking Dead Season 11

After taking a swing at a Negan origin story to end Season 10 of The Walking Dead, actor Jeffrey [...]

comicbook.com

 

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Showrunner Angela Kang reveals the ending of The Walking Dead is plotted and pitched but not yet written ahead of the series finale scheduled for next year. The eleventh and final season of the AMC zombie drama will air in three parts through 2022, returning with the beginning of the end on August 22 (or one week earlier on AMC+). The super-sized season, extended at 24 episodes to air as a Final Season Trilogy of eight-episode blocks, pulls from the final arc of creator Robert Kirkman's comic book zombie saga that ended after 193 issues in July 2019.

"No," the veteran Walking Dead writer-producer told the Deadline podcast when asked to reveal if the series finale is on the page. "We've plotted it all out and pitched the whole run to the studio and the network because obviously, they all want to know that we have a plan and aren't making it up as we go along (laughs). We're all so Type A about making sure that all the ducks are in a row. So we've done that."

Series stars Khary Payton and Eleanor Matsuura are among the trusted few who know how The Walking Dead will end after 177 total episodes. Because key comic characters like Michonne or Carl and Rick Grimes aren't around for the book's endgame as it's adapted for television, the series finale won't exactly resemble the 25-years-later ending of Kirkman's comic book.

"On the show, we have such a different array of characters now than were in the comic at this stretch," Kang said. "Andrew [Lincoln] left for his family reasons, we have various cast members that have also left, we have characters like Carol who have long outlasted their comic book counterpart, we have Daryl who doesn't even exist in the comics. And so I think naturally there is this process where some of the story from the comic book no longer really applies to the particular people that we're writing for."

The Final Season will instead draw from "the themes and major events and ideas" Kirkman created in the pages of the comic book. That includes the major storyline introducing Governor Pamela Milton (Laila Robins) and Officer Mercer (Michael James Shaw) of the Commonwealth, the largest civilization encountered so far on The Walking Dead.

"We definitely have to do a certain amount of deviation [from the comics]. What's been great is that Kirkman has always been all for it because he's like, 'I think it's great if people who read the comics are also getting a bit of a different experience on the show,'" Kang said. "So that's given us a lot of freedom which I am grateful for because we kind of need it at this point. We can't do exactly the comic book, it wouldn't feel right. Some of the stories wouldn't line up exactly right with the people that we have."

Updating the progress of the Final Season, Kang said, "We are right now so in the middle of it. We are filming, we are editing, writing, all the processes are going. I think it's like, when we're in that stage, it's hard to think about an ending that is still so far away in terms of production and all the things we have to do."

The Ending of The Walking Dead Final Season Is Not Yet Written

Showrunner Angela Kang reveals the ending of The Walking Dead is plotted and pitched but not yet [...]

comicbook.com

 

[Judderman]

For some reason I thought it was August this year, not next. Explains why trailers had no actual scenes clips.

 

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"The woman who left is not the one standing here now. So keep pushing me, Negan. Please." That's the threat Maggie Rhee (Lauren Cohan) issues to Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) at gunpoint in the first trailer for Season 11 of The Walking Dead, making a point to end with a statement: Maggie's back. More than a full season after Cohan's temporary exit in Season 9, Maggie made a dramatic return to help finish the Whisperer War in the original Season 10 finale, "A Certain Doom," before reuniting with Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Carol (Melissa McBride) in the extended Season 10 episode "Home Sweet Home."

But Maggie's homecoming, with nine-year-old son Hershel Rhee (Kien Michael Spiller) in tow, was anything but sweet. Returning to Alexandria meant reuniting with her husband's killer, Negan, eight years after the confrontation that spurred Maggie to leave Virginia with Georgie (Jayne Atkinson) and never look back — until now.

"One of the most exciting things this year, of course, is that Lauren Cohan is back as Maggie. That has shifted the focus of some of the story in these first eight episodes in particular, and that's exciting," executive producer Denise Huth said during a live stream with TWDUniverse on Twitch. "She was gone and she came back and did the Season 10 finale ['A Certain Doom'] — which feels like a hundred years ago now — and so to finally have her back and integrated into the story and working with these characters and these actors is really exciting."

Maggie Returns to The Walking Dead a Different Person in Season 11

'The woman who left is not the one standing here now. So keep pushing me, Negan. Please.' That's [...]

comicbook.com

"There's a lot about her we don't know. She was gone for a long time and she saw a lot of stuff, and that's going to inform who she is now," said Huth of Maggie's near-decade time away from The Walking Dead. "She's not the same person she was when she left. And so just getting to see some of these actors who haven't worked together in a while, their giddiness of getting back together, it did have that energy of the first day of school when we started."