AMC lines up a new Walking Dead spinoff for Negan and Maggie

By Blair Marnell Published March 7, 2022

The Walking Dead will come to an end after 11 seasons later this year. However, two of the primary leads will live on. AMC has announced a new Walking Dead spinoff, The Walking Dead: Isle of the Dead, with Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Lauren Cohan reprising their respective roles as Negan and Maggie.

However, Maggie and Negan don’t exactly have a close relationship on the show. Warning, spoilers follow: The first time they met, Negan murdered Maggie’s husband, Glenn. In recent seasons, Negan has reformed and aligned himself with the survivors at Alexandria. Naturally, Maggie has never forgiven Negan, but they have been able to work together on occasion. In Isle of the Dead, the unlikely duo will go someplace where TWD hasn’t explored before: New York City.

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According to AMC’s description, “Isle of the Dead envisions the popular Maggie and Negan characters traveling into a postapocalyptic Manhattan long ago cut off from the mainland. 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.”

Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and Maggie (Lauren Cohan) in The Walking Dead. — Image used with permission by copyright holder

The Walking Dead co-executive producer and scribe Eli Jorné will be the showrunner and executive producer of Isle of the Dead, under the guidance of Scott M. Gimple, The Walking Dead Universe chief content officer. Cohan and Morgan will also be executive producers on the project.

“This is a very big day for the expanding universe we are building around The Walking Dead,” said Dan McDermott, AMC’s president of entertainment. “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.”

The Walking Dead: Isle of the Dead will run for six episodes on both AMC and AMC+ in 2023.

Blair Marnell has been an entertainment journalist for over 15 years. His bylines have appeared in Wizard Magazine, Geek…

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