General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Narcos vs Zombies

Narcos vs Zombies is the original working title of S.O.Z: Soldados o Zombies (S.O.Z: Soldados o Zombies), a Mexican Spanish-language action-horror streaming series released on Amazon Prime Video on 6 August 2021. When the project was first announced, Prime Video promoted it under the literal name Narcos vs Zombies; the creators later rethought the title and released it as S.O.Z. Soldados o Zombies, keeping the same story of a drug trafficker, a failed military experiment, and mutant zombies.¹

Key fact	Detail
Original title	Announced as Narcos vs Zombies, later retitled S.O.Z. Soldados o Zombies¹
Premiere	6 August 2021, Prime Video; season 1 of 8 episodes released that day²^•³
Creators	Nicolás Entel and Miguel Tejada-Flores; directed by Rigoberto Castañeda¹^•⁴
Premise	Drug lord Alonso Marroquín escapes a Mexican prison; a failed U.S. Army experiment creates mutant zombies that infect the police unit pursuing him⁵
Lead cast	Sergio Peris-Mencheta as Alonso Marroquín; Horacio Garcia Rojas as Comandante Rafael Becerril; Nery Arredondo as Lucas Marroquín³
Production	Filmed in Durango, Mexico over 10 weeks (8 on location, 2 in Mexico City), about one week per episode⁴
Status	One season; listed as canceled/ended⁶

Spoilers

Premise

The story begins with a prison break. To avoid extradition, the charismatic and unpredictable drug lord Alonso Marroquín escapes from a high-security Mexican prison with his son Lucas and hides in the desert, taking shelter at Paradiso, a remote drug rehabilitation facility on the United States side of the border.⁵ Meanwhile, on the other side of the border, a United States Army experiment at a military base goes wrong; wounded soldiers, left for dead near the border, revive as a new breed of mutant zombies with special abilities.⁵

The zombies then converge on the fugitive: the Mexican police unit sent after Marroquín becomes infected, and the Army and the new zombie species end up at his hideout, where the battle for survival begins.⁵ Writer Miguel Tejada-Flores described the show as packing politics, a jailbreak, narcos, government corruption, and evil researchers into one story, calling it "not your average Walking Dead".⁷

Title change and development

The title Narcos vs Zombies was the name under which Prime Video first announced the production. The creatives reconsidered the name and retitled it S.O.Z. Soldados o Zombies, though the plot remained the same.¹ Nicolás Entel, the showrunner and a founding partner of Red Creek Productions, wrote the script years earlier; as a "risky, novel and counterintuitive story for Latin America", it attracted interest from networks and platforms, and MTV and YouTube held the rights at different times, but the series was never produced until Amazon stepped in and Dynamo joined as co-producer.⁴

The title is unrelated to the Netflix crime drama Narcos (2015–2017), which dramatizes the real-life story of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar and the law enforcement campaign against him in the late 1980s.⁸ The shared word "narcos" refers to the general drug-trafficking subject matter, not a crossover with that series.

Production

The series was shot in the state of Durango, Mexico, whose desert stands in for the border setting. The location raised costs because equipment, technicians, costumes, props, and talent all had to be brought from Mexico City.⁴ Production took 10 weeks in total: eight weeks in Durango on location and two in Mexico City, mostly in the studio, at roughly one week per episode. Entel contrasted this with American productions such as Fear the Walking Dead, which filmed in Mexico with much more money and about twice the time.⁴

Special effects were handled by the Mexican studio Ollin VFX, which created completely digital zombie animals among other effects.⁴ Director Rigoberto Castañeda, whose earlier credits include the film Kilómetro 31 and the Netflix series Diablero, described the zombies as a new species rather than ordinary undead, each with its own personality and name; filming in the Durango desert at times involved as many as 25 zombie performers on set with 7 a.m. calls.⁹^•¹ According to SensaCine, the series was the first original Mexican action production from Prime Video.¹

Reception and style

The eight-episode season was released at once and runs about 28 to 30 minutes per episode, which reviewers noted gives it a brisk pace with little filler.²^•¹⁰ Commentary has focused on the series' deliberately exaggerated tone, which mixes action, thriller, horror, and melodrama rather than aiming for realism.² Tejada-Flores reported that more than half of the audience reviews on Prime Video loved the show, with viewers asking for a sequel.⁷ The series has remained listed under both names in streaming catalogs: JustWatch and IMDb index it as S.O.Z: Soldiers or Zombies under the URL "narcos-vs-zombies", and databases such as TVDB list "Narcos Vs Zombies" as an alias.¹⁰^•⁵

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026