Andrew Lincoln Will Return as Rick Grimes in AMC's Walking Dead Movies

The latest installment of AMC's The Walking Dead got a lot of people's attention since it was billed as Andrew Lincoln's final episode as Rick Grimes for the long-running series. While it might be his TV finale, Lincoln isn't done with Rick Grimes just yet as Walking Dead chief content officer Scott M. Gimple has confirmed that there will be a trilogy of tv-only movies starring Lincoln as Grimes.

Revealed by The Hollywood Reporter, it turns out that Grimes did survive his final episode and will be the focal point of these movies. Don't expect these to be cheaply made as Gimple has touted the trilogy as something with a big budget. This will be a part of the expansion of The Walking Dead, which already includes the long-running comic, a spin-off series from AMC, and a number of video games.

Production for the first movie will start sometime in 2019, though no release date has been revealed thus far. Gimple promised a trilogy but claims that there is some flexibility in that, promising a possible new series and maybe focusing on some older characters from the show. Only time will tell how this expansion goes but the fact that The Walking Dead is basically a household name now could mean this will be a success.

"The story of Rick will go on in films. Right now, we're working on three but there's flexibility in that. … Over the next several years, we're going to be doing specials, new series are quite a possibility, high-quality digital content and then some content that defies description at the moment. We're going to dig into the past and see old characters. We're going to introduce new characters and new situations."

Supposedly, the discussion of these movies comes from talks Gimple and Lincoln had back in season four. It was also revealed that there were plans for Lincoln's Grimes to die back in the eighth season but obviously, those plans changed. Since the series is still going on, let's hope that it goes well since the franchise obviously has plans.

The Walking Dead is currently on its ninth season and airs on AMC.

Read:The Walking Dead Star Scott Wilson Filmed Season 9 Scenes Before His Death