The Walking Dead: Dead City is taking the world of walkers to new heights—literally. The Walking Dead spinoff is moving the franchise to Manhattan, and architecturally, that is exciting. Of course, the series originally started in the streets of Atlanta, with Andrew Lincoln's Rick Grimes trapped in a tank, but the show quickly vacated the claustrophobia of city streets for the open road, and the greenery of the surrounding areas before expanding across the eastern part of the United States.
Dead City sees a return to that cityscape, bringing Lauren Cohan and Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Maggie and Negan to the city that never sleeps, and the idea of making the city a character in itself was an exciting one to the show's creators. During an interview for The Walking Dead: Dead City, Collider's own Christina Radish spoke with Scott M. Gimple (EP, Chief Content Officer of The Walking Dead universe) and Eli Jorne (Dead City showrunner) about the series and asked the duo about the decision to move to New York—and what viewers could expect from the evolution of the walkers who exist in Manhattan. Jorne was quick to detail the parts of the city which excited him the most from a storytelling perspective, saying:
"A lot of it is situational. The universe has never really lived in a city, the way it will, and in a city like New York, especially. Just environmentally and architecturally, there are so many new ways that we can experience walkers that you couldn’t have. There’s the verticality of the city, and that alone has been the gift that keeps on giving with walkers. People’s relationship to the walkers is also interesting. How do you survive in that city, with that many walkers, as we’ll come to see, and the way that they are? You’ll see interesting new walker experiences, but also those ripple effects of, how do you survive in a city with walkers? In The Walking Dead, they fought a lot of walkers in the woods, but there were a lot of stretches of woods where you could just hike and camp out. You don’t get to do that as much in the city."
Gimple also teased what fans can expect from the walkers in Dead City, sharing that, "There are some incredibly notable walkers this season. There’s one that I think will both invoke awe in people, but they also might throw up." Before going on to say:
"It is one of the most awesome, disgusting, terrifying walkers that I’ve seen in the history of the show. There are a number of horrific walkers, but there is a mind-bendingly horrific walker coming up that I wasn’t on set for, and I’m glad I wasn’t. I got to experience the horrific magic at home, and it is magic. It quite possibly will make you throw up. I would just have something handy nearby, as you watch it."
Disgusting, terrifying walkers? Sign us up! The six-episode spinoff series is set around two years after the finale of The Walking Dead, and is likely to debut on AMC this summer. While we wait for more news about the series, check out our interview with the cast of Tales of the Walking Dead below: