The Walking Dead is adding another spinoff series to the franchise with the unlikely pairing of Maggie and Negan.
Isle of the Dead is a six-episode series set in New York City and stars Lauren Cohan, who plays Maggie, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who plays Negan. The pair were teamed up in the final season of The Walking Dead despite the fact that Negan killed Maggie’s husband Glenn. Maggie hasn’t taken the opportunity to kill Negan so I guess they’re buddies now.
In the spinoff series, Maggie and Negan venture into a post-apocalyptic Manhattan long ago cut off from the mainland. Death and decay fill the place, and the denizens of the crumbling city have made it their own world full of anarchy, danger, beauty, and terror.
Cohan who first appeared as a recurring character on The Walking Dead in Season 2 only appeared in a few episodes of Season 9 as a result of tense contract negotiations at the end of Season 8. She left the series in 2018. The actress returned for season 10’s finale and the show’s final season.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan joined the series as Negan back in 2016 in the episode Last Day on Earth. The one where I rage quit the show for the last time before coming back for the final season.
Eli Jorné will serve as showrunner on Isle of the Dead. He has been a writer and co-executive producer on The Walking Dead for multiple seasons and has an overall deal with AMC Studios. The series, which will launch on AMC and AMC+ in 2023, will be executive produced by Jorné; Scott M Gimple, who is the chief content officer of The Walking Dead universe; and Cohan and Morgan.
Isle of the Dead is the latest spinoff in the TWD universe; Fear the Walking Dead was recently renewed for an eighth season, The Walking Dead: World Beyond ran for two seasons, anthology series Tales of the Walking Dead is set to launch this year, and a series featuring Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride is also in the works for next year.
“This is a very big day for the expanding universe we are building around The Walking Dead,” said Dan McDermott, President of Entertainment and AMC Studios for AMC Networks. “It not only adds another compelling series to this collection, it extends our storytelling around two unforgettable characters fans have grown to love, hate or hate and then love in Maggie and Negan, brilliantly inhabited by Lauren and Jeffrey. It also lets us explore a corner of this universe located on the island of Manhattan, with an iconic skyline that takes on a very different meaning when viewed through the lens of a zombie apocalypse.”
Added Gimple: “Eli has created a chaotic, beautiful, grimy madhouse of the dead for Negan, Maggie, and fans of the show eager to discover an unseen and insane world of the TWD Universe. Lauren and Jeffrey have always been fantastic collaborators and now, we bring that collaboration to the next level with a series that will take these characters to their limits with the world — and each other. All of us are thrilled to take you on an all new, all different TWD epic for the ages.”
Sounds exciting. Will you be watching the new spinoff?
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