Will The Walking Dead spinoff shows live up to the hype?

The long list of new spinoff series coming to The Walking Dead universe have much to live up to. Fans of the main series will never forget season one of that series and how it set the bar for everything that came after. Will any of these spinoffs be able to engage fans and keep them watching like The Walking Dead did for so many years?

There are currently four new spinoffs in the works in TWDU at AMC Networks

• The Walking Dead: Dead City
• The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon 
• The Walking Dead: Rick and Michonne (Summit – working title) 
• More Tales of the Walking Dead

The information that makes one hopeful that these series can do justice to The Walking Dead is that not only are there many actors from TWD reprising their roles, but many directors, showrunners, and the like are involved in the spinoffs.

Lauren Cohan and Jeffrey Dean Morgan will return in Dead City as Maggie and Negan, with Norman Reedus in Daryl Dixon returning as the titular character. Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira will return as Rick and Michonne in that spinoff. The return of these fantastic actors is encouraging, as they have all done an outstanding job in their portrayals of their characters and navigated their transformation throughout their time on The Walking Dead. 

Dead City was created by Walking Dead Chief Content Officer Scott M. Gimple and TWD TWD veteran writer Eli Jorné who also serves as showrunner. Jorné, Cohan, and Morgan will executive produce this series.

The Walking Dead Spinoffs

Brian Zabel is the showrunner for Daryl Dixon, and although this is his first foray into TWDU, he has worked on many other outstanding projects. Angela Kang was initially tied to the series as showrunner and, according to IMDB, has written for this series. Greg Nicotero is reportedly directing for the series and has teased some pretty awesome SFX with the walkers for this series.  Reedus and Zabel will executive produce with other TWD names, including Gimple, Brian Bockrath, and Daniel Percival.

The Rick & Michonne series will see Gimple as showrunner and executive producer with Lincoln, Gurira, Bockrath, and another TWD veteran, Denise Huth, who had been with The Walking Dead since before it was greenlit.

More Tales of the Walking Dead hasn’t had any new information released as of the publishing of this article.

Hopefully, including all these Walking Dead talents in the new series will allow them to keep something the same while adding new and fresh ideas to make things interesting. The new settings alone will significantly alter the series as Dead City is set in Manhattan and Daryl Dixon in France. There has been no news about the Rick and Michonne setting, but filming has taken place in New Jersey, which will be vastly different from the main series’s wooded backdrop.

Dead City will premiere on AMC and AMC+ on June 18, 2023, at 10 p.m.

Daryl Dixon will premiere in the fall of 2023.

Rick and Michonne will premiere in 2024.

More Tales of the Walking Dead TBA

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