This interview has been edited for clarity.
On the one hand, comic book fans prefer their Hollywood adaptations to stick close to the source material, and not deviate from the original comic books, yet there’s no denying that what makes part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe so successful is a deep respect for the original stories, and its ability to blend a fresh take on an old story.
Unless you’re talking about the Marvel Zombies series of comics that sees the Marvel Universe infected by a zombie-like plague, and even as the world’s heroes attempt to save the day, not everyone will survive.
The success of the series led to a one-episode story in the first season of Disney+’s What If…? animated series, itself an anthology series that explores how events in the MCU could have turned out, should one small change be made, such as if Hela found the Ten Rings, or if T’Challa became Star-Lord.
Its popularity has now led to an upcoming four-episode series, Marvel Zombies, that continues where the original episode left off, with plenty of dead heroes and population, as well as survivors now trying to seek salvation. And since the original premise was based on the MCU, there is no way that this series can be faithful in the comic book source material, originally appearing in the now-defunct Ultimate Fantastic Four comic arcs Crossover (2005) and Frightful (2006), by Mark Millar and Greg Land, before seeing a limited series by The Walking Dead’s writer Robert Kirkman, and artist Sean Phillips, of comic book Criminal fame.
For one thing, there are currently no X-Men or Fantastic Four in the main MCU universe, yet both these superteams factor heavily in the comics.
“Tonally, we’re trying to honour that source material,” shares Brad Winderbaum, head of streaming, TV, and animation at Marvel Studios, in an interview with Geek Culture. “But [Robert and Sean] were starting from a different place – a unique universe that branched out of the Ultimate Fantastic Four – and we’re branching from the MCU, so it’s a different lore and a different set of characters, who are all in different places.”
“It could never be a one-to-one adaptation of the comics, but it was exciting, in terms of who lived and died, to watch the characters tell you the story,” he continues, with director and series creator Bryan Andrews adding how “it’s cool and important” for characters to “go through these feelings [of losing somebody]”.
And lose people it did, because as seen in the original episode and trailer for the upcoming mini-series, there is plenty of gore, dismemberment, and decapitation, leading to the deaths of some of the top heroes in the MCU, including Captain America, Iron Man and The Hulk. Part of the reason behind the zombie appeal can be attributed to the source material’s status as a hit classic stemming from the zombie fever of the mid-2000s to early 2010s, and its bold subversion of the Avengers as the infected responsible for initiating a worldwide zombie apocalypse. As audiences will soon discover, the Disney+ version will feature Kamala Khan / Ms Marvel (Iman Vellani) as a central figure; even so, a lot of care went into preserving the same tone of Robert Kirkman and Sean Phillips’ work for the small screen.
The price to pay for the explicit gore is that the series is the first TVMA (not appropriate for those under the age of 17) rated project from the studio. At one point in the official trailer, Blade Knight shows up and dices a zombified Ghost, from the Thunderbolts team, up like the cool, deadly vampire killer that he is. Rolling heads? Check. Sprays of blood? Double check.
It’s not all gore, however. Alongside the zombie vein of horror films, other genre elements like psychological thrills and, naturally, body horror also play into the Marvel Zombies experience, which pulls inspiration from George Romero, the pioneer behind 1978’s Dawn of the Dead and the 1985 follow-up Day of the Dead, and John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982). The result, Andrews explains, keeps the scares unpredictable.
“Having Marvel Zombies be kind of a catch-all where the sub-genres of horror, any one of those things might work their way in – it could be body horror, it could be gore slasher, it could be action horror, like this pastiche of horror genres – might come at any given moment. I think that helps keep the audience on their toes, because they don’t know what they’re going to get.”
With just four episodes, there remains vast storytelling potential that’s yet to be explored in the larger universe of the undead. According to Andrews, the team has “all these other things that are just waiting to go [and] to continue,” and amid the ideas in the vault is a lighthearted one involving a Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) crossover – a fitting callback to an episode in the miniseries that references the popular tabletop game.
“Well, it’s funny, because there was a What If episode I wanted to do that was super D&D,” the filmmaker reveals, laying out a premise that follows “C-level characters, basically your first-level characters” and the “A-level characters, who are probably the original Avengers” on the same adventure, only for the latter to “get the last laugh”.
“It’s like the nerds that get to defeat the jocks, right? They find some other way into the treasure room first to get all the stuff, while everyone else is fighting the big boss and losing, and they could come in and save the day. I mean, it could have been so freaking hilarious, so doing that at some point, I think it would be awesome.
“Maybe that could be another special event movie [that’s] off to the side, you know, like a one-off,” he laughs.
Does this mean that there will be another sequel to Marvel Zombies? That’s not up to Winderbaum, especially since there was a recent decree by Marvel Studios to churn out quality over quantity, to recover from a brand dilution that has see more spin-off titles that audiences cannot bear to keep up to date with, but make no mistake, any potential follow-up won’t need to start from scratch, as the team has plenty of cool ideas from the ones that didn’t make this cut.
“We have enough story to tell other aspects of this. There was too much story to put in the one show, so we have all these other things that are just waiting to go, to continue,” reveals Winderbaum, and it’s up to the fans to tell Disney they want more.
“So yeah, people like it, and they want to know what happens next. Please, please yell and be loud and tell us; tell Disney and do it.”
Marvel Zombies premieres on Disney+ on 24 September.
Si Jia is a casual geek at heart – or as casual as someone with Sephiroth’s theme on her Spotify playlist can get. A fan of movies, games, and Japanese culture, Si Jia’s greatest weakness is the Steam Summer Sale. Or any Steam sale, really.
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