Time running out for The Walking Dead season 11 in 2020

Even if production begins soon, The Walking Dead season 11 might not fit in 2020.

Now that June has arrived and studios are still working out ways to resume production on television shows and movies, an uncomfortable reality is starting to take shape when it comes to The Walking Dead season 11: Even if the show could start filming soon, there isn’t room on the calendar for it to fit in 2020.

With so many things changing daily, what we say today could be old news tomorrow. That’s a testament to how fast things are moving right now. Of course, it’s important to note that everything is speculation until AMC confirms its plans, but there’s no denying that no one is rushing to start filming anywhere, and this doesn’t bode well for The Walking Dead season 11.

Even as studios submit plans to reopen, the biggest challenge comes with the issue of liability. Hollywood studios have to make sure their casts and crews are safe, because if someone gets sick while filming then it will not only shut down production but it could be a litigation nightmare. (That’s the sad reality of the world we live in)

Not only is litigation a problem, but there’s also the matter of getting cast and crew together in one place. Very few people are ready to travel, understandably so, and this will make it harder to start filming soon.

Now that it’s June, another big issue is the number of available time slots for season 11. Before 2020 began, fans were looking forward to a possible 42 weeks of content throughout the year from TWD 10B and 11A, Fear the Walking Dead season 6 and World Beyond season 1.

Fast forward to June 2020 and we’re still eagerly awaiting the season 10 finale, World Beyond has been pushed back to the fall and we’ll have some episodes of Fear the Walking Dead this summer. That means we could have TWD 1016, 10 episodes of World Beyond and possibly 8 episodes of Fear TWD yet to come.

With roughly 26 weeks left of 2020, and the potential for 19 episodes of The Walking Dead Universe available, there isn’t much time for season 11 in the calendar even if filming resumed and the episodes were available. As it is, though, it looks like time is running out, both from a filming and production standpoint as well as a calendar standpoint. AMC likely wouldn’t run TWD and another show on the same night, so it makes sense that it will have to be pushed back to 2021.

I know this isn’t the kind of thing the TWD Family wants to hear right now, but having 19 weekends of TWD Universe shows is better than nothing, right? We’re fortunate as a fandom that two of the shows were already filmed, because so many other shows didn’t finish filming their current seasons and now they might not resume production until 2021.

We can always hope to see more of The Walking Dead in 2020, but at least we know we’ll still have the season 10 finale and with any luck AMC will beef it up to become a two-hour event rather than a standard episode.