The Walking Dead's Maggie and Negan Spinoff Will Film in New York

The Walking Dead is taking a bite out of the Big Apple: Jeffrey Dean Morgan confirms Maggie and Negan's Walking Dead spinoff set in Manhattan will film in New York City. AMC Networks has set Morgan and Lauren Cohan to star in Isle of the Dead, taking place against the backdrop of a post-apocalyptic NYC. Unlike the Georgia-shot Walking Dead, where the Peach State doubles as Virginia, Isle of the Dead will film closer to Morgan's home in New York State. (Morgan and his wife, actress Hilarie Burton Morgan, are famously the proud owners of Mischief Farm in upstate New York.) 

"We're gonna shoot in Manhattan, so I get to be home, which will be super cool," Morgan said on The Rich Eisen Show. "I think seeing zombies in Manhattan is gonna be kinda super fantastic. I'm really excited about that. We've got a studio on the Jersey side, and then we'll shoot in the city." 

Reads AMC's synopsis: "Isle of the Dead envisions the popular Maggie (Cohan) and Negan (Morgan) characters 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." 

The Walking Dead writer-producer Eli Jorné serves as showrunner and executive producer of the spinoff overseen by Scott Gimple, chief content officer of The Walking Dead Universe. The new series "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," Dan McDermott, president of entertainment and AMC Studios, said in a statement. 

"Eli has created a chaotic, beautiful, grimy madhouse of the dead for Negan, Maggie, and fans of the show eager to discover an unseen and insane world of the TWD Universe," said Gimple. "Lauren and Jeffrey have always been fantastic collaborators and now, we bring that collaboration to the next level with a series that will take these characters to their limits with the world — and each other.  All of us are thrilled to take you on an all new, all different TWD epic for the ages."

Morgan has teased the six-episode first season will "reinvent" the Walking Dead Universe, which briefly touched down in the ruins of post-apocalyptic Albany, New York, in Season 2 of spinoff The Walking Dead: World Beyond. That series, which filmed in and around Virginia, visited locations in Ithaca, NY, the site of a research facility operated by the Civic Republic Military. 

"I'm delighted that Negan and Maggie's journey continues. It's been such a ride walking in Negan's shoes, I'm beyond excited to continue his journey in New York City with Lauren," Morgan said in a statement. "Walkers in an urban setting has always been such a cool image, but 5th Avenue, Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty? The greatest city in the world?? The backdrop is amazing, but it's the story that Eli Jorné cooked up that is even better." 

Isle of the Dead debuts in 2023 on AMC. New episodes of The Walking Dead: The Final Season Part 2 of 3 air Sundays on AMC and AMC+. 

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