The short answer: a lot of background work and hope.

Back in 2018, AMC's hit series "The Walking Dead" made the shocking decision to write out its lead character, Rick (played by Andrew Lincoln, "This Life"). It was soon announced that Rick wasn't leaving the show's universe but rather leaving to star in a "Walking Dead" movie (or maybe trilogy of movies, as has been rumored).

But things got pretty quiet after that flurry of announcements. Of course, it didn't help that the whole industry shut down due to the pandemic, but that wasn't the only thing delaying the movie.

Prior to March 2020, the studio was having trouble settling on a script. You can only imagine the amount of pressure there is to get it right for a character as beloved as Rick, and for a movie based on so much TV and comic book source material as it is.

Regarding the pandemic, the studio could only wait and hope that the industry could get back to something like normal work, but it could continue working on the script, casting and other pre-production tasks.

It seems like the two finally paid off — it was being said back in the fall that the film would be ready to shoot "fairly soon" (that's according to WeGotThisCovered.com, a news site that's been following this story as relentlessly as a zombie after a brain). That means, of course, it'll still be a while before the release.

In the meantime, there's loads of other "Walking Dead"-related content being made — the 11th and final season of the original show, plus the ongoing spinoffs "Fear the Walking Dead" and "The World Beyond." There's also another planned spinoff for Darryl (Norman Reedus, "The Boondock Saints," 1999) and Carol (Melissa McBride, "The Mist," 2007), two more characters from the original series, but that's not due out until 2023 — hopefully we'll have at least one Rick movie by then.

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