AMC Greenlights 'Walking Dead' Spinoff

LOS ANGELES – “The Walking Dead” will continue on as AMC green lights a spinoff series starring Lauren Cohan and Jeffrey Dean Morgan who play Maggie and Negan on the current series.

The six-episode series, titled “Isle of the Dead,” will feature the two 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. The series is set to debut in AMC and AMC Plus in 2023.

“This is a very big day for the expanding universe we are building around ‘The Walking Dead,’” said Dan McDermott, president of entertainment and AMC Studios for AMC Networks. “It not only adds another compelling series to this collection, it 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. 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.”

Cohan joined “The Walking Dead” as Maggie in Season 2, though she was partially absent from the series during the second half of Season 9 and much of Season 10 after a contract dispute. In the interim, she starred in the ABC series “Whiskey Cavalier,” but returned as a full-time cast member on “Walking Dead” cast member in the series’ current final and 11th season.

Morgan arrived in “The Walking Dead” in the final episode of Season 6 as the then villainous Negan, who led the vicious group known as The Saviors. He began his time on the show by killing the characters Abraham and Glenn, the latter of whom was Maggie’s husband. But in subsequent seasons, his character became more likable and among the show’s most popular.