The Walking Dead franchise showrunners tease future crossovers at New York Comic Con panel
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The Walking Dead Panel at New York Comic Con
Entertainment Weekly brings together the showrunners from all three TWD series—Angela Kang (The Walking Dead), Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg (Fear the Walking Dead), Matt Negrete (The Walking Dead: World Beyond)—along with Chief Content Officer S
The Walking Dead is quickly turning into its own cinematic (or televisual?) universe on AMC, with three series currently airing and two more on the way, and fans can rest assured there's much more crossover action to come.
EW assembled the showrunners of each series — Angela Kang of The Walking Dead, Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg of Fear the Walking Dead, and Matt Negrete of The Walking Dead: World Beyond — along with chief content officer Scott M. Gimple for a virtual New York Comic Con panel on Friday, where they teased the increasing "cross-pollination" of the TWD universe.
"I will say, there's something we're working on that has some crossover-y elements to it," Gimple said. "There's a far-flung story that I won't even say much about… There's plans." He added that there is "absolutely a chance" that characters from the different series could meet up at some point.
Indeed, one of the new shows currently in development, Tales of the Walking Dead, will be an anthology series with "episodes focused on new or existing characters, backstories or other standalone experiences." And the showrunners have plenty of ideas for characters who could pop up in those episodes: Kang, for instance, would like to see the origin of the cannibals, and Negrete teased "two characters that have not yet appeared in World Beyond that I think have quite a very interesting backstory."
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He added, "It seems like they've had quite a few adventures that have occurred leading up to when they appear."
The showrunners also spoke about the COVID-19 pandemic and how it's impacted what will happen on screen. It seems the impact won't be substantial from a story perspective, but there are still plenty of adjustments that need to be made in the interest of health and safety.
"Usually we do a giant season opener, and there's hordes and hordes of zombies," Kang said. "It's not going to be that kind of thing because we can't have 300 zombie extras and people with faces smashed together… We've had to think outside the box, like how to make things still feel really scary, and really cool, and really emotional." She added that there is an upcoming story "that a lot of comic book fans have been waiting for for a long time."
As for Fear, which is currently in production on its sixth season (premiering Sunday), the adjustments have been quite minor. "We were pretty fortunate in terms of not having to change the creative all that much, because we were already in this anthology storytelling mode where the scripts were these deep dives on two or three characters," Chambliss said.
You can watch the full panel, moderated by EW's Dalton Ross, below for more from the showrunners, including their picks for which characters they would steal from each other's shows, their takes on their boss' "Gimple-isms," and more.
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