THE ROT STUFF

TIME FOR A FRESH TAKE ON ROTTING FLESH – WHAT IF YOU’VE GROWN UP IN THE APOCALYPSE AND NEVER REALLY HAD TO FACE THE UNDEAD? THE WALKING DEAD: WORLD BEYOND SHOWRUNNER MATTHEW NEGRETE PUTS HIS TEENAGER CHARACTERS THROUGH THEIR PACES…

- DARREN SCOTT

THE LATEST INSTALMENT IN what’s recently been christened The Walking Dead Universe is set a decade after the world turned. The pilot episode of the two-series limited event, The Walking Dead: World Beyond, briefly takes us behind the fortified walls of the Campus Colony of Omaha. It’s one of three cities that forms part of a network – with mysterious organisation the Civic Republic Military playing an as yet undisclosed part in the running of a new order.

As SFX caught up with showrunner Matthew Negrete in an old-world phone call, he was wrapping up post-production on season one while wrapping his head around how season two is going to play out. Which means we have to go right back to the beginning…

“The kernel of what actually became this show was the brainchild of Scott M Gimple, who is the Chief Content Officer of The Walking Dead franchise,” Negrete explains. “I was a writer on Walking Dead from season four through season nine, and he had the same instinct I think a lot of fans did – and I certainly did, as a writer on the show – which is The Walking Dead is one show following one group in a very specific area, from Georgia to Virginia. Robert Kirkman set up in the comics that that was what was happening – this zombie outbreak, as it were, was a worldwide thing. And so that obviously begs the question of, ‘What else is happening in the world?’”

This, it turns out, is a prelude to the recently announced Tales Of The Walking Dead anthology series.