While the biggest Walking Dead news of yesterday’s Comic-Con panels was that the planned trilogy of Rick Grimes movies starring Andrew Lincoln would be released theatrically via Universal, there was a lot of smaller but still significant news announced that mostly slipped under the cracks.

The Walking Dead panel in Hall H included showrunner Angela Kang, executive producer (and creator) Robert Kirkman and his fellow EPs Dave Alpert, Gale Anne Hurd and Greg Nicotero. They were joined by Norman Reedus, Melissa McBride, Danai Gurira, Ryan Hurst, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Avi Nash, Nadia Hilker, Eleanor Matsuura and Cailey Fleming from the cast.

First of all, The Walking Dead will be back for ten episodes starting on October 6, and if that date sounds familiar, that might be because it’s also the night that the CW will debut the new Batwoman series. (You’re gonna need your DVR for one of them!)

They also premiered the first trailer for the 10th season:

As mentioned before, this will be the final season for Danal Gurira‘s Michonne, as the actress moves onto other things (such as Black Panther 2, presumably).

Walking Dead news: Thora Birch joins new cast
Photo Credit: Zach Wolk
Kevin Carroll
HBO

At the panel, Hurd revealed that Thora Birch (Ghost World) and Kevin Carroll (The Leftovers) will be joining the cast for the new season. Birch will be playing Gamma, another member of the Whisperers who is protective of Samantha Morton’s Alpha, while Carroll will play Virgil.

Later that day, the spin-off series Fear the Walking Dead had its chance to take over Hall H with Kirkman  and the EPs joined by showrunners Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg, director and co-exec. producer Michael Satrazemis as well as the franchise CCO Scott Gimple. Fear‘s cast was also well-represented by Lennie James, Alycia Debnam-Carey, Danay Garcia, Maggie Grace, Jenna Elfman, Alexa Nisenson, Austin Amelio, Rubén Blades and Karen David.

Colby Minifie
Netflix

There, more Walking Dead news was announced. Gimple revealed that the show had been renewed for a sixth season with a short “midseason” break between this Sunday’s finale and the show’s return on August 11. Colby Minifie (Jessica Jones), Peter Jacobson (Transformers) and Colby Hollman will be joining the cast of Fear — yes, that’s two Colbies, just to make things confusing on set.

There’s also that THIRD Walking Dead series in development that will be about a “series of first-world kids who leave the comfort of their world to go on a quest” in a series that will “open up a whole new world,” according to Gimple. Apparently, this will be about the first generation to come of age during the Zombie Apocalypse — which actually we’ve seen in The Walking Dead with Carl and others — and just like the other shows: “Some will become heroes. Some will become villains.”

Gimple told the Hall H crowd: “The big secret is that there have been other civilizations that have survived the apocalypse. We are about to show a lot more.”

Annet Mahandru
FX
Aliyah Royale
CBS

Two new actors joined that untitled new series: Annet Mahendru (The Americansas “Huck” and Aliyah Royale (The Red Lineas “Iris,” joining Alexa MansourNicolas Cantu and Hal Cumpston, all playing new characters not in any of the comics, similar to the principle behind Fear. As you might be able to tell by looking up the ages of the cast, they are indeed younger than the casts of the other two shows. If these “kids” are anything like the younger people around me in New York, they’re probably going to be running around screaming and taking selfies of themselves as they’re eaten by zombies.

That third series begins filming in Richmond, Virginia next week with Kong: Skull Island director Jordan Vogt Roberts directing the pilot for the series co-created by Gimple with veteran TWD writer/producer Matt Negrete. It’s scheduled to premiere in the spring, probably filling in the gaps between Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead seasons.

If more Walking Dead news is announced at SDCC ’19, we will update this post accordingly. Some information in this report came from Deadline.

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