The animated Marvel Zombies TV series was first announced at 2022's San Diego Comic-Con and we've heard pretty much nothing since. The show is still on the way, of course, but it's a project Marvel Studios is clearly taking its time with.
During a recent interview with Phase Zero, What If...? director and executive producer Bryan Andrews shared new insights into what fans can expect from the project.
"That's going to be crazy," he said of Marvel Zombies. "Yeah, [it's] full TV-MA. It's spawning off of what was done on Episode [105]. The notion was, there's some inspiration from the comic, the fact that they're zombies, but we're not doing the comic, like, in any stretch."
"We have our own take on it, and a lot of that stuff has been set up by our talented [What If...?] writers early on, so, just taking that and... exploring that mythology in that episode a bit more. So, yeah, it's crazy."
It's not overly surprising to hear that Marvel Zombies isn't adapting the comic book series it shares a name with as neither did the "What If... Zombies?!" episode of What If...? On the page, the undead heroes can talk and have retained their intelligence; Marvel Studios' versions, meanwhile, are typical flesh-eating zombies.
Last year, Iman Vellani - who will reprise her role as Ms. Marvel in the show - had this to say about working on the animated TV-MA series:
"We’ve done the whole thing. It was amazing. It was so much fun. And I love...there are a lot of cool characters in the 'Marvel Zombies' show. And Kamala is kind of the center of the show. They described it to me, it's like, 'She's basically the Frodo of the story.' And I was like, 'That's amazing.'"
"I get to interact and meet all these people along her journey. And, yes, they're only the voices, and I don't get to hear their voices in real time. But just, it's my fantasies, right? Like, knowing Kamala is going to interact with some really cool people, even if it's just animation, is so special in a lot of ways."
The animated series reimagines the Marvel Universe as a new generation of heroes battle against an ever-spreading zombie scourge.
In the comic books, Marvel Zombies started as a five-issue limited series first published in 2005. The series was written by Robert Kirkman (who would later create The Walking Dead) with art by Sean Phillips and covers by Arthur Suydam.
The story was set in an alternate universe where the world's superhero population has been infected with a virus which turned them into zombies. The series was spun out of a story arc in the pages of Ultimate Fantastic Four, where the zombie Reed Richards tricked his Ultimate counterpart into opening a portal to the zombie universe only for the latter to prevent the former from ever coming to his universe.
Marvel Zombies doesn't have a confirmed premiere date, though we're expecting it to debut either later this year or in 2025.