What’s Next After ‘The Walking Dead’ Season 7? Robert Kirkman Planning At Least Five More Seasons
The Walking Dead could become one of the longest running dramas on television if creator Robert Kirkman has his way, that is. The show is currently in the middle of its seventh season, however, that hasn’t stopped creator Robert Kirkman from discussing his plans for the show’s future – which is now expected to outlive HBO’s incredibly popular fantasy drama, Game of Thrones. That being said, a recent ratings decline could still see network AMC drop The Walking Dead long before Kirkman plans.
According to Digital Spy, despite the typical lifetime for a television drama being around seven years, Kirkman plans for his show to last much longer. Kirkman used the latest issue of the comic which the show is based on to address the future of the show. Whilst explaining how long it would take for The Walking Dead as a show to catch up with the comics, Kirkman suggested that the show could run for a long time yet to come, saying “It took us six seasons to get to 100. It won’t take us six years to get to 200 and that will take us to season… TWELVE. And we’ll still be ahead of the show at that point.”
Robert Kirkman very optimistically thinks The Walking Dead could have more than five seasons left https://t.co/QVppEordLn pic.twitter.com/WaFs5ZiWdL
— Gizmodo (@Gizmodo) December 29, 2016
However, that doesn’t necessarily mean the entire comic story will be expanded into the TV show. Network AMC could decide that the show will skip some plots from the comic books in order to prevent it running for another five seasons. What’s more, Kirkman previously revealed that he knows exactly how The Walking Dead will end, meaning the TV show could cut a few corners in order to reach that ending, much as we’ve seen with HBO’s Game of Thrones adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s fantasy novels.
According to the Express, Kirkman discussed the direction of the show, saying “I know what the end point is, and at the end of the day, I want this entire long narrative to be a complete story with a beginning, middle and end. We’re just spending a lot of time in the middle, so, I kind of have to know what that direct is.”
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Following the first half of Season 7, The Walking Dead is currently on a mid-season break. However, when the season returns for its second half in 2017, fans have been promised a very different format to the first half – which largely dedicated each episode to a specific character or location.
That format has been met with a good deal of criticism from fans and expectedly seen a huge ratings decline as a result. At the beginning of Season 7, The Walking Dead held the second-biggest all-time audience of 17 million viewers. However, following a disastrous first half-season, viewers have dropped to 11 million. It isn’t known if a change in format is solely to blame for The Walking Dead’s decline in recent months, however, fans have undeniably been very vocal in their distaste for the new format.
‘The Walking Dead’ Season 7 Midseason Ratings Drop https://t.co/ULZMlpfxIX pic.twitter.com/F2zKVXzEGr
— Project Casting (@ProjectCasting) December 20, 2016
Showrunner Scott Gimple has promised a very different vibe in Season 7’s second half as a result of that aforementioned criticism. He confirmed that viewers can expect a return to the format of previous seasons with the next few episodes. It’s undeniable that The Walking Dead will need to return to its former glory if it’s to see another five seasons, as promised by Kirkman.
[Featured Image by AMC]
