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I am not sure what the point of this would be. If it is just a different group of people, why make that a different show?
The only Spin off I could see being worth while is an Anthology set in the Walking Dead universe. That could be very cool.
Maybe they realize the current series is dead and instead of keeping it shambling around, a spinnoff allows them to re-animate it in the right direction.
Cheap puns aside, the current series is absolutely gigantic in terms of viewership for a cable series. It’s making AMC a lot of money and they’re not going to put a bullet in it until it stops doing that.
Yeah. I think it’s gotten pretty bad from a quality standpoint, but there’s no denying that it’s a huge cash cow for AMC. The spinoff is likely just another way to capitalize on its popularity without diverting resources from the original show team.
And so it’s going to have this sleazy lawyer and his overweight zombie bodyguard in it…
So Heisenberg started the zombie epidemic!
They’re going to get Ross, Chandler, Monica, Phoebe, Joey and Rachel back together, and call it Fiends.
Not New Heart?
Cheap puns aside - I honestly think the writers may realize that people are getting a little tired of teh current storyline and crew - a ‘spin off’ allows them to go a new direction that may simply not be possible with how they have cornered themselves in the current series.
And what gives you this impression? I’m no fan of the show, but its viewership has been climbing steadily since the first season, with last season’s final episode pulling double what the first season’s final episode got. The only thing a spin-off seems to indicate is that AMC wants to exploit the enormous audience the show has.
A big part of the problem with the original show (though hardly the only problem) is that slow, shuffling, mindless zombies really aren’t that big of a problem unless you either do something stupid or are really unlucky. So the show has to keep making its characters do stupid things.
I don’t see how a spin-off would avoid basically ending up in the same trap.
That is the entire point of Zombies and what makes them different from other monsters. The average person could handle a few but they just keep coming and coming and eventually you get tired and they don’t. That’s what makes them scary.
It’s certainly a feeling I’ve had myself, but the numbers do suggest that The Walking Dead is still going strong.
For me, I like my zombie movies to be about people surviving zombies and the general collapse of the world. A component of that is the interpersonal conflicts between survivors… but it should only be a component. By this point, TWD has reduced zombies to shock troops in a war between people, and it’s lost the core of zombie goodness. Heck, you don’t even have to be bitten to turn now. Any post-apocalyptic show can have people fighting each other in the ruins of civilization. A zombie apocalypse needs to be about the zombies.
If they’re going for a spin-off, I’d really like to see it done with a discrete, and planned, beginning and ending. Sometimes it’s nice to have things reach a proper conclusion.
I bet their going to add David Caruso and call it Walking Dead: Miami.
I’ve never been able to get past the basic inconsistencies of the show. Spent long enough being angry at the series last season that I’m going to have to think whether I want to pay-subscribe to the new one. Doubt I’d pay up for a spinoff unless it’s really, really promising.
I just hope it’s not “Here’s some different characters in the exact same situation as the current cast.” Maybe focus on an Army/government unit still operating out there.
Two Guys, a Ghoul, and a Pizza Place
That’s exactly why I quit watching TWD after the episode where Darryl and Merle were about to fight the zombies in that pit.
The show has become a soap opera in a post-zombapocalyptic setting, not a show about people surviving the zombie apocalypse.
I’d like to see a spinoff concentrate on the initial apocalypse; rather than have Rick doing the “28 Days Later” thing and waking up afterward, they ought to concentrate on the initial stages- watch someone go from news stories to zombies in the street, to fleeing, etc… and have the whole thing have a planned ending after 3-4 seasons right about the point when TWD begins.
Or you get in a car. Or close a door. Or climb a ledge. Or smear some zombie guts on yourself to make them think you’re one of them.
Of course you could still get unlucky enough to get caught where those things aren’t an option, and that would be scary. But in Walking Dead, they almost never think things out and try and figure out a solution to the basic problem of not getting eaten by zombies, and so end up in such situations a lot more often then they would otherwise.
It’s also a tactic for keeping the costs of the original from exploding.
Notoriously, casts of successful shows have leverage with the production companies and networks that profit from those shows. Massive salaries for the leads in later seasons of such shows are a television tradition–a tradition that the production companies and networks would like to torpedo.
A new show could satisfy viewers while coming in at a much lower production cost. No-name or lesser name talent will be employed for acting, writing, directing and other production roles.
The moment this spin-off was announced, the cast (and production team) of “The Walking Dead” lost bargaining power.