The Walking Dead showrunner warns fans: Don't expect show to stick with comic's ending

With Season 10 of AMC’s The Walking Dead set to premiere in a week and a half, series showrunner Angela Kang is looking to quash the idea that the show will follow the recent conclusion of the comic book on which it’s based. She also hinted that the show still may have many more seasons in it. 

“Depending at the pace we go, it could be very fast at the end or it could be very slow,” Kang told Variety at a screening of the Season 10 premiere episode at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles on Monday night. “We always fill in with original material.”

Kang explained that Robert Kirkman, creator of The Walking Dead comic had told her and producer Scott Gimple: “look at all these threads that I set up for you, so the story could go a million different ways.”

Kirkman abruptly ended The Walking Dead comic in July with no warning, shocking…well…everyone, really. 

Also at the screening, The Walking Dead star Jeffrey Dean Morgan agreed that although the show does “deviate a lot” from its source material, he thinks “there’s probably a good three years of material there.”

“You don’t want to run it into the ground,” Morgan told the media outlet at the screening. “Me personally, I’d say let’s go out on top. Let’s go out still being the number one show in the world. Whether or not that happens, I don’t know. I think if we just stuck with the comic book, we’ve still got another three years.”

Despite the show having struggled with ratings, AMC CEO Josh Sapan said last week that he believes the franchise has “decades and decades of life left.” After all, in addition to the flagship series and spinoff show, Fear the Walking Dead, there’s also another spinoff series and the first of several movies in the works. So, yes, those walkers still have legs — ratings and source material be damned!

Season 10 of The Walking Dead premieres on AMC on Oct. 6.

(Via Variety)