AMC plans female-led third 'Walking Dead' series for 2020

WASHINGTON (Sinclair Broadcast Group) — It looks like the dead will be doing a bit more walking next year.

AMC announced Monday it will launch a third scripted series set in the zombie-filled world of “The Walking Dead."

According to Entertainment Weekly, the show will feature two female protagonists and “focus on the first generation to come-of-age in the apocalypse as we know it.” The currently untitled spinoff is set to film 10 episodes this summer to premiere on the cable network sometime in 2020.

The series, created by Scott Gimple and Matt Negrete, expands a “Walking Dead” TV universe that includes the original series, which just wrapped up its ninth season, “Fear the Walking Dead,” which begins its fifth season in June, and a previously announced trilogy of films featuring Andrew Lincoln’s Rick Grimes character. Producers have not yet said if any existing characters will carry over to the new show.

“Showing audiences an unseen pocket of 'The Walking Dead' universe steeped in a new mythology is a very cool way to celebrate a ‘Decade of the Dead’ on TV and over 15 years of Robert Kirkman’s brilliant comic,” Gimple said in a statement.

Assuming next year’s seasons of “The Walking Dead” and “Fear the Walking Dead” run for 16 episodes, the launch of the new series could give AMC up to 42 weeks of new post-apocalyptic zombie-killing content in 2020.

“This allows us to come to the marketplace with completely uninterrupted ‘Walking Dead’ universe content from post-Super Bowl Sunday to Thanksgiving,” Scott Collins, AMC's president of ad sales, told Variety in an interview.