The return of Rick Grimes begins in first teaser for The Walking Dead movie

Early in Season 10 of The Walking Dead, Rick Grimes left the show, signaling the end of an era for the hit AMC series. It was not the end of Rick Grimes, though. While Rick and the actor who plays him, Andrew Lincoln, were leaving the series, they were moving on to the next phase of the franchise with a planned series of movies. Now, courtesy of The Walking Dead's San Diego Comic-Con panel, we've got our first teaser for the next phase of Rick Grimes' life in the zombie apocalypse. 

The teaser came at the very end of the show's Hall H panel, which featured the cast and creators of the upcoming tenth season dropping a trailer and new cast announcements on the Comic-Con crowd. Just when it seemed like things were wrapping up, moderator Chris Hardwick announced there was one more thing to show the fans, and that's when this very brief but very tantalizing clip played. 

Sadly, we don't get any more footage than that for now, but the teaser does confirm that Rick's next adventure will arrive not as a TV movie on AMC, but as a full-fledged theatrical release. The official Walking Dead Twitter account later confirmed that the film will be released in partnership with Universal Pictures, though it does not yet have an official release date.

Fans knew to expect the departure of Rick Grimes during The Walking Dead's ninth season, as Lincoln has already revealed he was leaving the series, but what no one expected was exactly what that meant. In the midseason finale last November, Rick Grimes detonated a bridge in order to stop a herd of walkers from getting to his loved ones, and it seemed that was going to be the end of him. The explosion and ensuing zombie flood was not enough to kill Rick, though. Instead he was lying near death on the riverbank when Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh) found him and convinced that helicopter that had been hovering around the show for a while to pick him up.

The teaser we saw today also features that helicopter flying toward an urban center, but that's about all we know about Rick's potential future. The same night that his final episode aired, it was reported that Lincoln would star in a trilogy of Rick Grimes-centered movies, and now it's apparently time to gear up for the first one. We'll let you know more about what's to come for Rick Grimes as soon as we hear it. 

The Walking Dead returns Oct. 6 on AMC.

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