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.
Along with a sturdy narrative, any filmed entertainment dealing in the fantastic requires a signature visual style, and MCU properties more than deliver in this department. And yet, with CGI effects as the industry standard for creating the as-yet-unimagined, animation offers storytellers even more opportunities for expansive world-building. In terms of this creative process, the world of television animation differs from live-action narrative in that the visual language, camera angles, and camera movement are often directed from the page by the writer, with the director and artists interpreting scripts visually after the voice actors take their initial pass. Marvel Zombies had the benefit of an artist on the team from the jump.
“We kind of started knowing what we were wanting already, and I think visually heavily,” Andrews says. “So Brad and Zeb might mention a little thing and then my mind immediately just goes, ‘Woo!’ And I'm already seeing stuff, and I'm seeing things that they aren't even thinking about just yet.” And the end results? “Being able to blow (Zeb) away, where he is just like, ‘Oh my god. The thing that was on the page was like this, but you did what with it?’ That's always very exciting.”
“Another layer is when we get the voice actors in,” Andrews continues. “We let them roll with it a little bit, and they bring us a little extra piece of juice that we didn't quite notice or see… Just something that just gets it alive.” In addition to those already mentioned, the absolutely stacked cast includes Elizabeth Olsen, Simu Liu, Awkwafina, David Harbour, Paul Rudd, Randall Park, Florence Pugh, Tessa Thompson, Wyatt Russell, F. Murray Abraham, and more, all reprising their live-action roles.
Narratively, Marvel Zombies is epic in scope, and while there were undoubtedly a huge number of details to suss out in the creation of the series, one decision rises to the top of Fango’s curiosity: How did they choose which heroes to zombify? “I think ‘fun level’ (determined that) to a certain degree,” offers Andrews. “We needed certain characters that were alive to deal with certain characters that needed to be dead. So it's kind of like, all right, well, if these people are alive, I guess these people need to be dead. Just that puzzle of what is needed for the story, and also then a little bit of fun factor.”
The living dead’s preferred menu is definitely a five-napkin affair, and dispatching flesh-eaters is a messy business on the best days. Fango asked Winderbaum if, in his position as Head of TV, Streaming, and Animation at Disney+, he had concerns about the level of gore inherent in and expected from the zombie genre. “One thing I love about Marvel is that it isn't one thing, it's many things,” he explains. “Some comedies, some tragedies, some things for little kids, and some things very mature for adults. And that's something that Marvel can do that perhaps other single universes don't do. It's more malleable in that way. So when we decided to make a Marvel Zombies show, it really had to be a TV-MA show.”
Marvel Zombies premiers September 24th on Disney+.
