The Walking Dead: Dead City Releases Premiere Date and First Look

By Cameron Bonomolo - October 8, 2022 06:00 pm EDT

AMC Networks has released the official first look at the Maggie and Negan Walking Dead spinoff starring Lauren Cohan and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, titled The Walking Dead: Dead City. Announced as Isle of the Dead in March, the new series premiering in 2023 on AMC sees Cohan and Morgan's enemies-turned-allies "traveling into a post-apocalyptic 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." As the adage goes: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

The first images from Dead City, which Cohan and Morgan debuted during The Walking Dead's NYCC panel on Saturday, show that their rivalry is very much alive as Maggie presses her knife to Negan's throat. The network also announced the six-episode first season of The Walking Dead: Dead City premieres in April 2023 on AMC and AMC+.

Eli Jorné, a writer and co-executive producer on The Walking Dead for multiple seasons, will serve as showrunner on the series he created under an overall deal with AMC Studios. TWD Universe chief content officer Scott M. Gimple is overseeing the spinoff and serves as executive producer with Cohan and Morgan.

(Photo:
Lauren Cohan as Maggie Rhee, Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Negan – The Walking Dead: Dead City _ Season 1 – Photo Credit: Peter Kramer/AMC
- Peter Kramer/AMC)

"It is a very, very different world. New York City in the apocalypse is unlike any place you've seen in the apocalypse," Gimple teased at New York Comic Con. "It's a madhouse."

As told by Cohan, Dead City focuses on "the most unlikely two people that you would want to see together."

"It makes it very good to see us together because it's the hardest situation that we [Maggie and Negan] have to be in, and the need is bigger than the fear," she said. Added Morgan: "We're proud of it, and we think you guys are going to love it."

TWD: Dead City is one of three new Walking Dead spinoffs slated to air next year, including the France-set Daryl Dixon spinoff starring Norman Reedus and the Rick Grimes & Michonne series reuniting Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira.

The Maggie and Negan spinoff "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," AMC chief Dan McDermott said in a statement when announcing the series. "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 TWD: Dead City cast includes Gaius Charles (Grey's Anatomy) as Perlie Armstrong, Karina Ortiz (Orange Is the New Black) as Amaia, Mahina Napoleon (NCIS: Hawai'i) as Ginny, Jonathan Higginbotham (The Blacklist) as Tommaso, Trey Santiago-Hudson (New Amsterdam) as Jano, and Zeljko Ivanek (Madam Secretary) as "The Croat." See the first-look images in the gallery below.

The final episodes of The Walking Dead air Sundays on AMC and AMC+, concluding with the series finale on November 20th. The Walking Dead: Dead City premieres April 2023.