Back in September of last year, AMC announced that it was to follow up the Breaking Bad spin-off Better Call Saul with a “companion show” to the hit zombie series The Walking Dead, with comic book creator Robert Kirkman working on the development alongside Gale Anne Hurd and David Alpert. The spin-off – which has been rumoured to be a prequel – was eyed for a 2015 release date, but during a chat with Vulture, AMC executives Charlie Collier and Joel Stillerman have indicated that the project is still in the very early stages of development.
“That show is not as far along [as Better Call Saul],” said Stillerman. “Robert has some things on his plate. He continues to write every issue of the comic and hasn’t finished season four of The Walking Dead, which he is very intimately involved with and will continue to be. That’s really in the incubation stages. The one thing that I’ll share is just an anecdote that Robert shared with us. He has such a specific vision that he laid out really clearly in the first issue of the comic book. And I encourage anybody who’s interested in the show to go read the note that he wrote in the first issue of the comic. His motivation for telling that story was so clear and so powerful, and it served as such a great north star for the show. We kicked around a few ideas, but primarily what he’s working on is, what is the idea that gives [him] as clear a mandate to make another version of this show as [he] had for the first one? What is going on [now] is a more philosophical discussion over why there should be another version of the show. Once we answer that, we’ll zero in on the specific creative.”
Asked whether the spin-off was 100% green lit, Stillerman suggested that “it’s in development”, with Collier adding, “What we want to do is not diminish the mothership. What we want to do is find something that everyone involved feels as passionately about as being a unique vehicle and unique enterprise as compared to the original series. We’ll take our time, and we’ll do it right.”
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