It seems Fear The Walking Dead won’t just be a companion series, but will be an origins story, exploring the beginnings of the virus that would end up turning the world into a smorgasbord for the undead. Cliff Curtis and Kim Dickens play the two primary leads in Fear The Walking Dead , as two individual single parents, each accompanied by their children.
Executive Producer Gale Anne Hurd recently commented on the choice of Los Angeles for the upcoming Walking Dead spinoff, skirting around the question that the choice of locale might have been made to get revenge on her own hometown.
“As a fourth-generation Angeleno, I certainly like to see it depicted how my friends, family, and colleagues would survive. Now we get an opportunity to see with a very different type of group than the type we encountered in Atlanta on The Walking Dead.”
Initially, it was reported that a single six-episode season of Fear The Walking Dead was ordered, but, following the initial airing of the trailer, AMC ordered an additional six-episode season . As it stands now, Walking Dead fans can already look forward to two seasons of Fear The Walking Dead , giving the show a more-than-fair chance of drawing a big following.
The image comic, The Walking Dead , by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard, is the source material for AMC’s successful Walking Dead series (developed by Frank Darabont), so both mediums open after the zombie apocalypse is in full swing and the earth is already covered with walkers. This is where Fear The Walking Dead will undoubtedly deviate from all that fans of both the comic and television Walking Dead series know, adding a great deal more suspense to the story. Taking place in pre-virus Los Angeles, Fear The Walking Dead will also be able to explore the inevitable mass carnage of the virus as it begins to spread.
There are those that are already predicting failure for the Walking Dead spinoff series, most notably citing the fact that Fear The Walking Dead won’t be based on any source material. While there is no comic series to guide writers, they will have the original Walking Dead comics and AMC’s primary series to fall back on for source material, enabling them to develop a plausible and compelling story in Fear The Walking Dead that will eventually come into its own. As with any series, fans will have to give Fear The Walking Dead that first season to really find their sea legs and develop into its own hit series.