Okay, straight off the bat we should flag that this story is EXTREMELY spoilery for anyone who isn’t 100% caught up on The Walking Dead, so if that sounds like you, please LOOK AWAY NOW.

Still here? Great, because this one is exciting!

If you watched the most recent episode of the show, you’d have seen Andrew Lincoln’s character Rick Grimes being flown away from a zombie horde by helicopter. It was a massive swerve for those who were expecting Lincoln to be written out with a big old death scene, but apparently it won’t be the end of his story after all…

Instead, we’ll actually be getting more of Rick’s saga, with a series of spin-off movies planned by FX. The first of these will follow Rick’s journey outside of the main show, while others will cover previously unexplored areas of the Walking Dead world.

“It’s not the beginning of the end, it’s the end of the beginning,” saidLincoln on aftershow Talking Dead. “And I like the idea that we get to tell a bigger story, maybe with a sort of wider vista. And I’ve always been interested in what’s going on out there, you know, whether or not there is contact with the wider world.”

“I want to know the meta of it all,” continuedthe star. “And I suppose to be able to kind of touch upon that in a contained story for me is a very exciting proposition... Maybe it’s the start of a bigger story.”

We don’t have a release date just yet, but for fans of Rick Grimes and his blood-spattered badassery, this is very good news indeed!

'- By George Wales @georgewales85'