The Gore and Lore of MARVEL ZOMBIES

“Its destiny was to be a TV-MA show… We had to have that level of intense, violent stakes that the zombie genre demanded,” explains Brad Winderbaum, executive producer of Marvel Zombies, the genre-bending animated series based on the comic book of the same name. When speaking to FANGORIA a week before the show’s Disney+ premiere, Winderbaum and co-creator/director/executive producer Bryan Andrews take great pains to assure Fango readers their new undead baby has the goods. After a sneak peek courtesy of the streamer, Fango can attest to the truthfulness of their assurances. The show, which, like the comic, asks and answers the question, “What if Marvel heroes were zombies?” is filled with hordes of the titular walking, flying, and generally super dead, creative deaths and dismemberment on a regular schedule, and gore aplenty. The animated series is sure to please fans of the source material as well as those surfing into the title with fresh eyes.

The path from comic to a four-part mini-series, or “mini-movie event,” as per Andrews, included a pit stop at What If…?,the MCU-based animated anthology series created by television writer A.C. Bradley (Ms. Marvel) for Disney+. When asked if the “What if… Zombies?” installment was planned as a proof-of-concept for the bigger picture, Winderbaum tells Fango, “When Bryan and I decided to make What If…?, part of the reason … was to do a zombies episode.” Written by Matthew Chauncey and directed by Andrews, the episode involved MCU character Janet van Dyne (the original Wasp) returning from the Quantum Realm with a bad case of being a zombie. The story proved wildly popular, confirming that, when given an option, people love the living dead, especially the super ones.

The next step was to figure out how to roll out a multi-episode series. “We [didn’t] want to start exactly where [“What If… Zombies?”] left off, but we're not going to leave people hanging,” Andrews explains. “We wanted this bigger lore, so we start a number of years later so that we can have different things in play and surprise the audience.” The series, created by Andrews and comic and screenwriter Zeb Wells (Deadpool & Wolverine), kicks off with Ms. Marvel, Ironheart, and Kate Bishop (Iman Vellani, Dominique Thorne, and Hailee Steinfeld, all reprising their roles from the films and TV series) on a zombie apocalypse walkabout. Their supply run gets complicated, turns into a quest, and… let’s just say, don’t get too attached to any of the two dozen-plus MCU characters that make their way into the story.