Marvel Zombies will be Marvel Studios’ first adult-targeted animated project

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When it comes to telling a good zombie story, it’s probably best to lean into the horror of it all… which might explain why Marvel Zombies, the spin-off from the animated first season episode of Marvel’s What If..?, is going to be the company’s first adult-rated animated project when it debuts on Disney+.

The show’s age-rating — TV-MA — and episode count (four episodes) were both officially unveiled at D23 Expo 2024 on Saturday afternoon during the Marvel Animation showcase. The series, which comes from head writer Zeb Wells (who’s just wrapping up a run on the Amazing Spider-Man comic book series and also wrote last year’s big-screen live-action release The Marvels), will take a different, more mature, look at the alternate Marvel Universe overrun by the undead that first appeared in 2021’s ‘What If… Zombies?!’ episode of the regular What If…? series.

In footage shown during the D23 Expo panel, Shang-Chi was given the Ten Rings by his father to prevent his transformation into a zombie after being bitten. It didn’t seem to take, however, as the scene cut to five years later, when Katy Chen (played by Awkwafina in the Shang-Chi movie… and in the Marvel Zombies series, too!) has the Ten Rings for herself, fighting off a zombie horde alongside Agent Wu, from the Ant-Man movies.

No release date has been announced for Marvel Zombies, which has been in the works for quite a while; it was originally announced back in 2021 as part of Disney+ Day.

Keep up to date on Popverse’s Marvel coverage, with these highlights: Disney CEO Bob Iger is promising Deadpool & Wolverine will be MCU’s biggest movie “in a long time”, how Marvel Studios is now working “much more closely” to sell Marvel comics, where Marvel sees its future audience (and it’s not at Marvel, yet!), Overgrown children of the atom: Marvel’s X-Men can’t evolve past their ’90s commercial peak, and the biggest outstanding questions of the Marvel Studios’ movies & TV shows.