Eli Jorné had worked in the writers’ room of The Walking Dead during the tenth season. He wrote three episodes. He then went on to develop projects for both AMC and other channels.
But when Scott Gimple, the creative director of this fictional universe, called him if he wanted to write a TV sequel, he said yes. I had even thought before the proposal about which characters I wanted to tell a story: Maggie and Negan. “I’m attracted to characters that connect with their dark side and Negan, in addition, has a very funny dark humor.” He was fascinated by the following approach: “What would it be like for Maggie to live with the man who killed her husband? How do you survive and navigate all those feelings and anger and pain?”. And, since Gimple bought the idea, the viewer has The Walking Dead: Dead City tonight on AMC at 11 p.m. and also on the AMC streaming service.
This involves embarking on a joint excursion to Manhattan. The dangerous Croat played by Željko Ivanek, the winner of an Emmy for Damages, operates there. “Ivanek is a very charismatic actor, like Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and watching him act is a joy, it’s one of the reasons why I became a screenwriter”, he is happy. “Part of his appeal is the way he tries to invoke the Negan we knew, that tyrannical monster that attracted the viewer, who committed atrocious acts with a smile and caught you off guard,” he continues.
From the start, however, Dead City didn’t work on the page: it wasn’t until he set the plot in New York. “During the season we will see how several groups of people have survived in a bleak landscape with streets full of walkers and walkers even falling from the sky,” explains Jorné. It’s a vertical, claustrophobic world where the inhabitants had to find their own way to find supplies or get around. This time, moreover, Jorné not only has Lauren Cohan and Jeffrey Dean Morgan as lead actors, but also as executive producers, which implies that they have some creative control. “They are very collaborative and have been very useful when outlining the scripts”, he acknowledges. Jorné, after all, was only in the tenth season of The Walking Dead, while Cohan was on the project since the second season and Morgan since the seventh. “Sometimes I ask them if they think their characters would make a certain decision. And, when they propose to me to change a dialogue so that it sounds more like Negan or Maggie, they are always right”, he admits.
This TV series, which Jorné hopes will return for a second season after these initial six episodes, is the beginning of a new era. AMC has Daryl Dixon in production with actor Norman Reedus discovering the underworld of Paris, and Rick
