The premiere of the latest installment in The Walking Dead Universe — The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live — drew big numbers for AMC on cable and the AMC Plus streaming service.
At a time when most of cable is a zombie, an original scripted show pulling in large audience is almost supernatural.
The series — which brings back fan favorites Rick and Michonne from the original record-breaking series — attracted nearly 3 million viewers on Sunday, according to Nielsen live-plus-three-day ratings provided by AMC.
That makes it the biggest opening night audience for an AMC series in six years.
The Ones Who Live also produced the biggest day ever for direct-to-consumer signups at AMC Plus. It is already the most-watched show on AMC Plus with just two days of viewing in the books.
The finale of the original The Walking Dead series drew 3.1 million viewers in November 2022. Its premiere on Halloween in 2010 had 6.3 million total viewers, a record for a cable series at the time. It grew to be the biggest series on all of television for five years, peaking with its season five premiere raking in 22 million viewers — an all-time high for a cable show.
“What a start for The Ones Who Live, the biggest episode of television in the history of AMC Plus for both viewership and customer acquisition, the top cable drama of the current TV season in key demos and our biggest AMC series premiere in six years,” said Dan McDermott, president of entertainment and AMC Studios for AMC Networks.
“This is a show the world, and particularly the incredibly passionate and engaged fans of this universe, have been waiting for and essentially willed into existence. Thanks to Danai [Gurira, who plays Michonne], Andy [Lincoln, who plays Rick] and Scott [Gimple, chief content officer of The Walking Dead Universe and showrunner for the series] for everything it took to get here and all that is yet to come,” McDermott said. “We can’t wait to share the rest of this incredible season with the fans over the next five weeks.”
The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live tells the love story of The Walking Dead characters Rick Grimes and Michonne. The series also stars Pollyanna McIntosh, Lesley-Ann Brandt, Terry O’Quinn, Matthew August Jeffers, Craig Tate, Breeda Wool and Andrew Bachelor.
“When we each began this extraordinary journey so many years ago, the most mind-meltingly beautiful moments have always been either with or about the fans,” actors Lincoln and Gurira said.
“Playing trailers at San Diego Comic-Con, sharing the dark with 6,500 people, we both came to realize this is a story that is a connection between the passionate commitment of our remarkable crews and casts and the greatest fans in fandom,” they said. “Telling this story from behind and in front of the cameras as a team has been a dream (sometimes a fever dream) and to see the response is even better than five pizzas and a wedding ring. We want to take this opportunity to thank those fans from the bottom of our blood-stained hearts. We all did this together.”
The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live is executive produced by Gimple, Lincoln, Gurira, Denise Huth, Brian Bockrath and Greg Nicotero.
The series joins The Walking Dead: Dead City and The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon as current series in The Walking Dead Universe.
