The first of a new trio of spin-offs, “The Walking Dead: Dead City,” has made history with last Sunday’s debut being the biggest premiere of any season of television for the AMC+ streaming service since it launched in 2020.
It beat out the previous record-holder, its predecessor series “The Walking Dead,” whose eleventh and final season was released in three blocks. That final block premiering in October 2022 has held the record until now.
“The Walking Dead: Dead City” also went well on linear TV, where the first episode brought in two million viewers in Live+3. That includes the AMC cable channel as well as a simulcast across BBCA, IFC and SundanceTV, as well as two encore screenings on AMC.
When isolated to its original 9pm airing, the show has become the No. 1 most-watched new cable drama of 2023 with 972,000 total viewers. That puts it ahead of “Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches” (355,000), “The Last of Us” (353,000), Paramount Network’s recent rebroadcast of “1883” (311,000) and Syfy’s “The Ark” (280,000).
The series follows Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan (Jeffery Dean Morgan) in 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 world.
Further spin-offs, one about Daryl Dixon and another about Rick and Michonne, are on the way in the coming months.
Source: Variety
