First there was URINETOWN. Then came YEAST NATION. And now... brace yourself... ZM!

New Line Theatre opens its 35th season with the American premiere of this gloriously unhinged new meta-musical from certified chaos merchants Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis — the Tony-winning mad geniuses behind Urinetown, who looked at musical theatre and said, “What if… but weirder?”

Part Walking Dead, part Bat Boy, and part “you probably shouldn’t eat that,” ZM is a darkly comic fable set in an American small town where a fast-food chain is test-marketing a new sandwich. Which turns customers into zombies. Two brave teenage employees must risk everything to infiltrate corporate headquarters, uncover the truth, and maybe -- just maybe -- ask, “Should we have read the ingredients list?”

Originally commissioned by True Love Productions, Kotis and Hollmann began developing ZM in 2013 during a five-day writers’ retreat. Thirteen years, multiple workshops, and at least a few questionable snacks later, the show lumbered its way to its first fully staged production — in Spanish — in Mexico City in 2024. New Line's is the first full production in English, making New Line the only company brave (and unsupervised) enough to produce all three Kotis-Hollmann musicals: Urinetown (2007, 2022), Yeast Nation (2018), and now ZM.

The show will be directed by Scott Miller and Chris Moore, with music direction by Jason Eschhofen, choreography by Livy Potthoff, sound design by Ryan Day, scenic design by Dr. Rob Lippert, and lighting design by Eric Wennlund.

ZM will be New Line's third zombie musical, after Night of the Living Dead in 2013 and The Zombies of Penzance in 2018. (If you count Be More Chill and Reefer Madness as zombie musicals -- and honestly, at this point, why not -- this is their fifth. Someone should check on them.)