This November, it will be three years since Andrew Lincoln’s last episode of The Walking Dead and since that time, Lincoln seems to have followed through on his plan to spend more time with this family. He hasn’t returned to television, and he’s appeared in only one feature film, Penguin Bloom. Granted, much of that is due to the pandemic, which has made it impossible for a number of people to work, as well as delaying Lincoln’s planned The Walking Dead film.
The film has still not started production yet, although Lincoln is raring to go, as he recently told SFX Magazine (via Den of Geek): “I’m not filming at the moment. I’m still very much in lockdown. We’re very excited about how, at the first available opportunity, we’re going to go into production -– there’s talk of it being spring. I can’t wait to get those cowboy boots.”
We’re more than a month into spring, so hopefully, he’ll be able to slip into those boots any day now. The hope is that it won’t be the last time he slips into them, either. When AMC announced The Walking Dead movie minutes after Andrew Lincoln left the series, the idea at the time was that he’d star in multiple The Walking Dead movies. With ratings in decline, the pandemic delaying the first movie, and the parent series ending next year, however, no one seems to be talking about multiple movies anymore. They’re just trying to make the first one.
Lincoln, however, told SFX Magazine that additional movies are still very much a possibility. “I have signed for more than one film … All of those answers will hopefully be resolved in the next couple of months but, yes, there’s more than one,” he said. “We need to get the first one absolutely right and that’s why it’s taken longer than we anticipated – and obviously with the pandemic. I can’t wait. I’m really excited about broadening the scale and scope of the story and finding out where Rick is.”
Though Scott Gimple, the architect of The Walking Dead universe, has ruled out Rick Grimes popping up in the second spin-off series, The World Beyond, Lincoln himself isn’t exactly ruling out a return to the parent series. He doesn’t yet know one way or another whether he’ll appear, as he told SFX: “I don’t think it’s written yet, but I would never say never to that because everybody that’s still doing the TV show are dear friends, and it’s an extraordinary feat that they’re still going and making this beautiful and ground-breaking show that still resonates with the world.”
In other words, if they write him into the final season, Andrew Lincoln will appear in the final season. Given the fact that his character is still alive, and given how much he’s meant to the series, and the fact that he’s willing to do it suggests that Angela Kang would be passing up a huge opportunity to end the parent series right with the star of the show. At the very least, he should appear in an end-credits stinger teasing his upcoming movie.
The first of eight episodes of the final season of The Walking Dead will premiere on AMC on August 22nd.
Source: SFX Magazine via Den of Geek