Major Netflix Show Scrapped, According to Zack Snyder

Filmmaker Zack Snyder seemed to reveal that his Army of the Dead spinoff series has been canceled. Snyder directed the star-studded film in 2021, giving Netflix one of its biggest hit films ever and building the foundation for a franchise to come. However, in a new interview with Games Radar on Monday, Snyder referred to the spinoff as if it was already canceled.

Snyder said that Army of the Dead takes place in a shared fictional universe with his movie Rebel Moon when he made a reference to "the Army of the Dead animated series that we never did." For many commenters, this was the nail in the coffin for a show that they were beginning to doubt they'd ever see. Netflix announced big plans for an Army of the Dead franchise back in 2020, including the anime-style series Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas. Now, it sounds like that show isn't coming at all.

Lost Vegas was supposed to be a prequel set during the beginning of the zombie outbreak, giving backstory on several of the main characters including Maria Cruz (Ana de la Reguera), Scott Ward (Dave Bautista), Kate Ward (Ella Purnell), Vanderohe (Omari Hardwick) and Marianne Peters (Tig Notaro). Reguera even spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about the story and content of the series, hinting that she had already seen some material – perhaps scripts.

Snyder also talked about the show's content in a Q&A published by Netflix back in 2021. He said: "I really wanted this sort of weird ambiguity to [the zombies'] origins – which, of course, we'll explore in the animated series, Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas. And without giving away too much... If you pay close attention, there's a number of zombies that are clearly not zombies. You see normal zombies and then you see some robot zombies. Are they monitors that the government has placed among the zombies to monitor them? Are they technology from the other world? What's happening there?"

However, Snyder seemed pessimistic about Lost Vegas back in March during an interview with The Nerd Queens podcast. He said: "I will say that there's been a slight stall on the Lost Vegas animated thing. For technical reasons, it went off the rail a little bit. Twilight of the Gods, on the other hand, has been forging ahead incredibly well and it's looking amazing."

It's always possible that Snyder spoke too soon and Lost Vegas will see the light of day somehow – in fact, as a show about zombies it might be appropriate if it had to rise from the dead before it could be finished. For now, Army of the Dead and Army of Thieves are both streaming on Netflix.