It's been just two short years since Andrew Lincoln last occupied the shoes of Rick Grimes on The Walking Dead, but when the actor departed the role, it was with the understanding that he would be returning for a series of Walking Dead movies. Naturally, the COVID-19 pandemic put those plans on hold, but the actor told ABC News that he's hoping to start filming The Walking Dead movie next spring.
Andrew Lincoln is currently starring as Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol as London's Old Vic Theatre (which is being performed in an empty auditorium and live-streamed), but he feels optimistic that he'll be returning to the realm of zombies soon enough. "It does feel like there is a certain sense of positivity and the cavalry’s coming with the vaccines," Lincoln said. "And there’s a real sort of sense of a renewal, hopefully." Although we've had to wait longer than expected for The Walking Dead movie, there's been plenty of Walking Dead action to go around, and creator Robert Kirkman teased earlier this year that the pandemic delay has only made the movie better.
There's tons of stuff going on behind the scenes. I don't want anyone to think that we're just kind of waiting around for this pandemic to end. I would say that, if anything, the pandemic is going to make a lot of movies better. I think the Rick Grimes movie chief among them, just because we're getting a lot more time to cook this thing and make sure it's perfect. But when things do quiet down, you guys are going to hear a ton more about this movie.
Schedules are typically pretty damn tight with these projects, so getting to spend more time perfecting the script is definitely a good thing. "We're coming along in a big way. We're just in this particular space where we have [to wait]," added executive producer David Alpert. "We can't shoot right now, so that's just the big thing holding us back. We are desperate to get back into production, and get everything going, but we have something really exciting, really unique, really different, and can't wait to get it going. We just have to wait for it to be safe." In addition to The Walking Dead movies, there's also an expanded eleventh and final season of the flagship series to look forward to, a seventh season of Fear the Walking Dead, a second and final season of The Walking Dead: World Beyond, the anthology series Tales of the Walking Dead, and a spin-off series that will focus on Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Carol (Melissa McBride).