Norman Reedus Reveals Walking Dead Spinoff Is A Reset
During the recent conclusion to the The Walking Dead, Norman Reedus’ fan-favorite character, Daryl Dixon, was last seen riding off into the sunset on his trademark motorcycle. Fans do not have to wait long to see Daryl back in action against walkers, as The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon is set to premieres sometime next year. New reporting from Entertainment Weekly shines some more light on the plot, setting, and overall tone of the project, which has been kept shrouded in mystery.
The new show will start with Daryl waking up in Europe, not sure where he is, how he got there, or how he will be able to get home. The new setting means that Norman Reedus had to experience a vastly different set than The Walking Dead’s home in Georgia, specifically, the amount of French being spoken around him, both on and off set. The actor said “People are speaking French around me, and part of my story is trying to figure out, is this good or bad?”
Norman Reedus explains that with the new setting, “it’s a reset”, without the baggage of a large ensemble cast and over a decade of stories, the new show is a fresh start. The shambling zombie apocalypse in The Walking Dead was still a top-rated cable show, but not quite the ratings juggernaut it was prior to season 7. At the start of that season, over 17 million people tuned in to see who Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Negan beat to a pulp with his signature bat.
The new life for the franchise is not centered on just Norman Reedus, fellow Walking Dead franchise alumni are getting their own spinoffs next year, with each show expected to be six episodes in length for their first season. Andrew Lincoln and Danai Guirra are back as Rick and Michonne for their unnamed show. Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Lauran Cohen are back as frenemies Negan and Maggie for Dead City, which finds the pair trying to survive in New York City.
All of the shows may make it seem like The Walking Dead never went off the air. Scott Gimple, Chief Walking dead content officer for AMC, explains that with the three spin-offs and the anthology show, Tales of the Walking Dead, AMC will actually be airing less hours of zombie content than before. To hear Norman Reedus explain it, his show will at least be “a show that goes in the opposite direction, just because we didn’t want to do the same thing.”
Norman Reedus, well into his second decade playing Daryl Dixon, sounds like a man rejuvenated and loving his job, despite saying just a year ago that he was excited to be done with the franchise. Dropping an f-bomb, the star says that his new show will be “f—ing epic.” Whether fans will want to follow Daryl across the ocean remains to be seen, but new characters, in a new setting, tackling a new problem with new walkers, sounds like just the reset that the franchise needed to be even stronger than before.
