The Walking Dead’s Jeffrey Dean Morgan has had ‘conversations’ about a possible Negan spinoff

The Walking Dead main series may be coming to an end with its upcoming 11th season, but The Walking Dead franchise is poised to live on for years to come with new spinoffs and follow-up projects in the works. We already know about several major projects involving some of the series' most beloved characters, but could more be on the way, and could one of them involve everyone's favorite baseball bat-wielding madman, Negan?

Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who's been playing the legendary villain-turned-antihero for the last five years, stopped by Conan this week to chat about the series and promote his new horror film The Unholy. While on the topic of The Walking Dead -- which recently aired a Negan prequel episode starring Morgan's real-life wife Hilarie Burton-Morgan as Negan's wife Lucille -- Morgan and host Conan O'Brien discussed the lengthy 14-month shooting process to get the show back on schedule after COVID-driven shutdowns and the addition of Season 10 bonus episode, and of course the topic of rumored spinoffs came up.

While Morgan couldn't confirm that he'll stick around the franchise after Season 11, he did at least confirm that the idea has come up.

"We'll see. It's definitely being talked about," Morgan said. "I think they're thinking of a couple different ideas, but I've definitely had conversations about possibly continuing the story of Negan."

The Walking Dead has been a multi-series franchise for nearly six years now thanks to the arrival of Fear the Walking Dead, and last year AMC added a second spinoff series titled The Walking Dead: World Beyond to its already walker-heavy lineup, but even that's not the end for this media powerhouse. The planned spinoff feature film starring Andrew Lincoln as former series lead Rick Grimes is set to shoot this year, and a spinoff starring fan favorites Carol Peletier (Melissa McBride) and Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) is already in the works as a follow-up to the main series. Throw in an anthology series titled Tales of the Walking Dead and you've got at least several more years of live-action stories even without a Negan show. 

Whether Morgan sticks around to keep playing the character or not remains to be seen. For now, he's intent on making his final months the series as much of a family affair as possible. Hot on the heels of his wife making an appearance in the series, Morgan also revealed that his son Gus is set to pop up in an upcoming episode as a child walker, which should make for some especially creepy Morgan family photos on set.

The Walking Dead airs Sundays on AMC.