AMC has announced it has green lit a new spinoff series from The Walking Dead universe centred on Maggie and Negan. The six-episode series titled Isle of the Dead is set to premiere next year, according to Variety.
In the fifth spinoff series, the duo will travel to a post-apocalyptic Manhattan that has been “cut off from the mainland” for a long time. The crumbling city is filled with the dead and denizens who have made New York City their own world full of anarchy, danger, beauty, and terror. Lauren Cohen has portrayed Maggie since 2011 in Season 2 of the original series, Jeffrey Dean Morgan meanwhile, began playing the Negan character in 2016.
“This is a very big day for the expanding universe we are building around ‘The Walking Dead‘. 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,” AMC president of entertainment and AMC Studios for AMC Networks, Dan McDermott said in a press release.
“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.”
Chief content officer of The Walking Dead universe, Scott M. Gimple with The Walking Dead series writer and co-executive producer, Eli Jorné serving as Isle of the Dead’s writer, showrunner and executive producer.
“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,” Scott M. Gimple said in a press release.
“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.”
Since the start of TWD universe in 2010 with the original series, the franchise went on to tell more stories in the universe in spinoff, Fear The Walking Dead which is currently in its seventh season and two season-limited series, Walking Dead: World Beyond. Other spinoffs currently in the works include the anthology series, Tales of the Walking Dead, a Carol and Daryl spinoff starring Melissa McBride and Norman Reedus plus three movies starring Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes. The franchise has also made the jump to video games, specifically the fantastic Telltale series that takes place in the comic book universe features Clementine throughout four seasons as well as a Michonne spinoff.
The first season of Maggie and Negan’s ‘Walking Dead‘ spinoff, Isle of the Dead is set to premiere in 2023 on AMC and AMC+. Until then, the second part of the 11th and final season of The Walking Dead kicked off last month and will finally come to an end next month.
