As much as fans seem to bemoan every mid-season or season cliffhanger and scratch their heads at every narrative decision, it seems they still can’t get enough of “The Walking Dead.” AMC‘s massively successful zombie series has already spawned a spinoff, “Fear The Walking Dead,” and the network sees the franchise as one that can be reworked, revived and revisited time and again.
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Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference, AMC Networks President and CEO Josh Sapan compared “The Walking Dead” to “Star Trek,” which has had no shortage of series and versions, with a new TV show scheduled to arrive next spring. And Sapan believes “The Walking Dead” will have a similar lifespan.
“[‘Star Trek’] came and went three times,” Sapan said. “We do think that we have a franchise [in ‘The Walking Dead’ and ‘Fear the Walking Dead’] that is one of the rare franchises that you occasionally come across in what we do for a living.”
Time will tell if Sapan is right or not, but certainly at the moment, the audience and appetite for the show doesn’t appear to be waning. And for AMC overall, they feel pretty good at where they’re at in what’s a very competitive field.
“The environment is more cluttered and it is more challenging to be meaningful,” he said. “The nice news is that if you look at cable dramas, and you look at the top 10, we have five of them. And that’s a pretty good place to be.”
And before you scoff at Sapan’s comments, just remember that if someone told you in 1969 when “Star Trek” was first taken off the air that it would still be around four decades, they probably would’ve said you were crazy. [The Wrap]