After THE WALKING DEAD’s Season 4 ended with Rick Grimes seemingly re-finding his balls, series creator Robert Kirkman has been speaking to MTV about Season 5, the confirmed spin-off show, and about a certain Negan.

On Season 5, Kirkman said, “I just turned in the second episode script for Season 5, and all the writers are hard at work on their individual episodes. We’re pretty much halfway through the fifth season, script-wise. And we’ve already nailed down what our finale is, and what our overall arc of the season is. The back half of the season is taking shape very quickly, and we’ll have all the scripts written by the summer. It’s always interesting the way these things overlap. By the time people have seen the entirety of the season, we’re already pretty much done with the writing on the first half of the next season. We’re always quite a bit ahead. We’ll be rolling cameras in May, so I’m very excited about that.”

Discussing the “companion series” that has already been confirmed, Kirkman added, “As far as the spin-off goes, I’m actively working with Dave Erickson on that, and we know when our proposed release date is – although I can’t tell you that, obviously. We’re working towards that show, and it’s gonna be awesome.”

Fans of THE WALKING DEAD in comic book form will be fully aware of Negan. First appearing in THE WALKING DEAD #100, the character and his barbed-wire-covered baseball bat named Lucile have made quite the impression. In fact, in one of the most shocking moments to date, one of the book’s long-standing fan favourite characters met their demise at the hands of Negan and Lucile. And it looks as if we’ll be seeing him in the show at some point. Kirkman teased, “As far as Negan casting goes, Scott and I are always talking about who we would put in that. It’s definitely in our minds, and there are definitely a lot of candidates. But I wouldn’t expect Negan too terribly soon, although he is definitely in the plan. It’s a 99% lock that he’s going to be in the show eventually, so be on the lookout for that.”

Season 5 of THE WALKING DEAD will hit the small screen towards the end of this year.

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