New Walking Dead Series Centered on 'Two Young Female Protagonists' Snags 10-Episode Order at AMC

AMC is making good on its promise to continue expanding the Walking Dead universe, with the cabler announcing on Monday that it has ordered a third series set in new “unseen pocket” (read: the future) of the zombie apocalypse.

The follow-up to Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead — co-created by franchise overlord Scott M. Gimple and longtime TWD scribe Matt Negrete — will, per AMC, “feature two young female protagonists and focus on the first generation to come-of-age in the apocalypse as we know it. Some will become heroes. Some will become villains. In the end, all of them will be changed forever. Grown-up and cemented in their identities, both good and bad.”

Negrete will serve as showrunner on the untitled spinoff, which will begin production this summer ahead of a 2020 debut.

“Showing audiences an unseen pocket of The Walking Dead universe steeped in a new mythology is a very cool way to celebrate a ‘Decade of the Dead’ on TV and over 15 years of Robert Kirkman’s brilliant comic,” said Gimple in a statement. “Matt Negrete is one of the best writer-producers in TWD’s long history — I’m thrilled to be working beside him to tell stories unlike we’ve seen before, taking our first step into an even larger world.”

“We’re thrilled that the Dead will keep walking into a new corner of the post-apocalyptic world, a corner that will present stories and characters unlike any that The Walking Dead has dramatized thus far, and that is bound to excite one of the most passionate fanbases in television,” said David Madden, AMC’s head of programming.

News of the third TWD series arrives one week after the conclusion of the mothership’s ninth season and two months before the launch of Fear the Walking Dead‘s fifth season. As previously reported, AMC is also developing a series of Rick Grimes-centric Walking Dead TV movies, with Andrew Lincoln reprising his signature role.

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