The Walking Dead boss promises ‘wild new direction’ for Rick Grimes movies – but says process has been ‘real challenge’

THE Walking Dead's boss has promised a ‘wild new direction’ for the Rick Grimes movies – and admitted the process has been a ‘real challenge’.

The character - played by Andrew Lincoln - left the hit AMC series at the end of series nine.

However Rick will be getting his own spin-off movie trilogy, and Scott M. Gimple, chief content officer for the series and franchise, has opened up about what fans can expect from the big screen version.

He told : "The scale is bigger and the budget is bigger, and it’s The Walking Dead, but heightened, both in the narrative themes, but also in just what we see onscreen.

"I say heightened, but I should also say it’s also very different. It’s not going to be the exact same thing we saw on television, just larger.

"We are going in some wild new directions."

Scott has enjoyed the process so far, working on the script and how the production will come together, but admitted it hasn't been without its challenges.

He said: "Movies are a different beast than television. Television is like, boom, we’re done.

"Movies, to calibrate an hour and a half, two hours is no joke, and it’s been a lot of fun, but it’s a real challenge and we take it very seriously for the fans.

"We really want to deliver them something special, something worth their trip to the movies. We’re trying to be very deliberate and deliver something new."

Rick was last seen going off in a helicopter after the bridge explosion, with his comrades on the ground thinking he had died.

Teasing how things move on from that moment, Scott added: "We are going to continue to tell Rick’s story, and we are going to discover so much of the world through that story.

"Rick will be challenged in different ways that, in some ways, everything that he’s been through has sort of prepared him for.

"It’s a much larger world than one that he had been operating in, and that was challenging in and of itself."