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Turns out the walkers aren’t the only ones who are undead.

For months “The Walking Dead” has hyped the departure of its central hero, Rick Grimes, breaking from its usual secretive shocking-death playbook to not only confirm rumors that Andrew Lincoln, the actor who played him, was leaving, but also to say exactly when he would go.

That moment came Sunday night in a retrospective, mournful episode that matched the tone of the marketing around Lincoln’s exit. The episode took Rick through a series of fever dream encounters with old dead friends like Shane (Jon Bernthal) and Hershel (Scott Wilson), before marching him toward what seemed like an explosive final heroic sacrifice.

Until the end, when he came to on a river bank, very much alive, and was rescued by a helicopter. The story then jumped ahead six years to find Rick’s cohorts making do without him, his young daughter, Judith, assuming the mantle (and hat) of the new zombie-slaying Grimes.

While Rick’s destination and eventual fate may be uncertain, it won’t be for long: “The Walking Dead” will resume his story with a trilogy of feature-length movies to run on AMC, with the first going into production next year.

“Everybody thinks I’m a sociopath because I’m not breaking down at every interview,” Lincoln said over lunch in New York last month. “But the truth is that I know that there’s something happening next year.”

Unlike the series, the films will not be direct adaptations from the “Walking Dead” comics. The films will tell an original Rick Grimes story and have beefed-up production values, said Scott M. Gimple, the chief content officer of the “Walking Dead” universe, who is writing the first film. “They’re not just longer episodes,” he said. (The comics author and series executive producer Robert Kirkman is heavily involved, he added.)

The move into movies represents the latest platform expansion for a franchise which, since its arrival on TV in 2010, has spun off another series (“Fear the Walking Dead”), a supplementary fan show (“Talking Dead”), video games, conferences, cruises, a line of wines and a subscription gift box service, among other products. [More at Source]