Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride Sign New ‘Walking Dead’ Deals

In the wake of the events of last night’s episode of The Walking Dead and this morning’s news that Andrew Lincoln will be returning in three new AMC direct The Walking Dead films, we are now getting updates on what will be happening with other characters in the walkingdeadverse.

Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride have now reportedly signed hefty, three-year franchise deals. When they first debuted in season 1 as Darryl and Carol, they were earning $8,500 per episode. The total values of their new contracts could range anywhere from $50-90 million for Reedus and $20 million for McBride. Meanwhile, Danai Gurira is reportedly still in negotiations for a contract of her own.

Here’s what AMC programming president David Madden told THR about the new deals:

“The deals that we made for Norman and Melissa are franchise deals. Our deals with Norman and Melissa allow us the flexibility to either move them or use them in more than one place, depending on what seems creatively right to Scott and to his partners. We do look at this as a universe where we’re trying to expand into as many different places as the show fits. We think this is a franchise that could live across formats. So, we want to do it carefully; we want to be strategic; we want to try to do it right. But there is a multi-year plan that could include additional series, digital content and specials.”

Meanwhile, here are some new details from Scott Gimple about the upcoming Rick Grimes films:

It is really important for the audience to know that we are going to be continuing to tell the story of Rick Grimes in these AMC Studios original films. We don’t want this thing to be like, “Oh, well, he’ll be back on the show any moment now.” We are telling Rick’s story in another medium, and it’s going to be these AMC Studios original films. They’re going to be on AMC, most probably. They’re centered around Rick Grimes. We’re going to tell the story of what happens after that helicopter flight, and these are going to be big, epic entertainments. Each are quality films. That’s what’s been happening in the industry. We’ve seen Netflix make these, basically, studio films for people to watch in their homes, and we’re going to be doing the same sort of thing here.

We are talking about a trilogy for this Rick Grimes story. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the only Rick Grimes stories we’re ever going to tell, and also they’re probably not going to be the only movies that we tell. The Rick Grimes story, of course, is the biggest thing that we’re doing right off the bat, but we’re going to be doing a number of different Walking Dead things over the next few years. A universe of stuff. We’re not going to release it all at once. We’re going to be putting things out over the years for maximum effect. We don’t want to overwhelm folks with it.