Mark Millar says a live-action Marvel Zombies movie is in development for the MCU

One of our favourite episodes of Disney+’s Marvel What If…? series so far was undoubtedly the Zombies episode.

While the episode itself had too much of the trademark Marvel humour, it also had some very fun nods to zombie tropes and danced very close to the fault line when it came to all-out horror… and it made us wonder what might happen if we actually got a live-action version.

Well, now it seems we may get that… at some stage.

While we have had a taste of zombie Iron Man in Spider-man: Far From Home, we’re hearing rumours that we may actually get a full movie set in the universe where Janet Van Dyne unleashes a deadly virus on the world, turning everyone, heroes included, into the walking – but fully aware – dead. In fact, the episode of What If…? opens the door for this to happen – if this virus exists in the quantum realm, then it’s a threat to all realities… and the third Ant-man movie is called Ant-man and the Wasp: Quantumania… could this mean all sorts of madness is coming?

Well, in a new blog on his site, Ultimate Avengers and Kick-Ass writer Mark Millar reflects on how he and Greg Land created the Marvel Zombies in their run on Ultimate Fantastic Four: “I remember telling the guys I had this idea on the plane from Scotland about a superhero arriving from another dimension with a zombie plague and biting The Avengers when they showed up to contain the problem. The Avengers then bit Spider-Man, Spider-Man bit the X-Men and so on. It all came from a sketch I did of a zombie Mister Fantastic and I loved the idea of zombies with powers, materialising through walls like Kitty Pryde or just smashing through steel doors like the zombie Hulk. Visually, it felt like something I’d never seen before and I liked the idea of a story about ordinary people trying to survive against super-zombies, Magneto being the last of the unbitten and, ironically, the last protector of the human race in the war against these creatures.”

He says that, at the time, it was hated at Marvel and it was assumed he was joking… until a while later Joe Quesada said he should call it Marvel Zombies and it would be a fun idea on his Fantastic Four book: “People around the office started to get quite excited by the idea of a zombie Marvel universe and started pitching out for ideas. I’d written the first arc and was bringing them back in my final UFF so I didn’t have much to say, but they found a fantastic team with Robert and Sean doing the spin-off book, which ran over multiple series.”

Then Millar, who is involved in numerous Hollywood and TV projects, added: “They also spawned zombie cover months, toys and statues, endless Marvel Zombie cosplayers and now not only this What If episode, but also (if my sources are correct) a little live-action Marvel Zombies further down the line, but you never heard that from me. As I should have remembered when this got bumped at that meeting, zombies never stay dead.”

With the Multiverse being exploded and explored in the MCU and Millar saying The Fantastic Four are the key to the zombie story, who just so happen to be heading to the MCU soon, could this mean his sources are correct and we are on the verge of a full-blown MCU movie? After all, Kevin Feige has said that Deadpool will be a r-rated Marvel movie, so there will likely be a series of more adult movies set in the MCU well underway by the time we get around to possible zombies. And let’s not forget that Marvel brought in the man who gave us the Deadites, Sam Raimi, to direct Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness… could Raimi be set to go further down the horror road with Marvel, injecting some of that Evil Dead goodness?

Could you imagine?

Whatever happens, this could be a fun idea to explore on the big screen.

Thoughts?