The AMC show’s ninth season saw series protagonist Rick Grimes exit under questionable circumstances. This sudden hole in the mythos didn’t remain in place for very long, though, as the creative team confirmed plans to produce a trilogy of Rick-starring TV movies.

However, such a trajectory for the franchise changed in July 2022 when TWD stars Andrew Lincoln (Rick) and Danai Gurira (Michonne) told an SDCC audience that a new spinoff miniseries would replace the films.

Titled The Ones Who Live, AMC’s latest Walking Dead series will premiere on Sunday, February 25. Despite the hype surrounding Lincoln’s and Gurira’s imminent return, fans still wonder why the movie trilogy never came to fruition.

AMC
Andrew Lincoln in The Ones Who Live

Walking Dead EP on what happened to the Rick Grimes movies

In an interview with Screen Rant at The Ones Who Live premiere, Executive Producer Scott Gimple detailed how the film trilogy morphed into a limited series.

For him, it all came down to timing and sudden changes in the world. It also helped that Danai Gurira‘s tenure on the main show ended as Gimple’s talks with Lincoln were ongoing.

The producer told Screen Rant,

“It really was a question of just time, circumstance, the world changing immediately. And ultimately, some things changed in a remarkable way as far as — we were working on this for a while with Andy [Andrew Lincoln], and then for as long as things happened and things happened in the world, as you know, Danai [Gurira] was available at the same time. She had finished her tenure on the show, and then it was like, ‘Whoa, this is going to be very different.’ I mean, absolutely in my mind, I thought we would get to that, but suddenly, it was here.

“To tell you the truth, the way it all happened, it was kismet that it all came together like this because we really love working together. But we couldn’t have predicted the way the world turned, the way the landscape turned, the way the availabilities happened, a lot of it was out of left field.”

The Walking Dead EP’s comment implies the evolution of the Rick Grimes movies into a show spawned from Lincoln and Gurira being fortuitously available at the same time.

Fans will see the results of such an effort soon enough. The first episode of The Ones Who Live will air later this month on February 25.