Warning: This article contains spoilers for Fear The Walking Dead .
It seems Robert Kirkman is doing everything possible to differentiate Fear The Walking Dead from the primary Walking Dead series. Instead of a ragtag group of survivors banding together, Fear The Walking Dead will feature characters from the same family and presumably additional characters will at least come from the same neighborhood, since Kirkman has been stressing this feeling of familiarity between Fear The Walking Dead ‘s living, human characters. Also different is the location. While The Walking Dead takes place in the southeast part of the country, Fear The Walking Dead will be set in Los Angeles, where the concrete and steel jungle is at its densest.
Following those spoilers, Kirkman revealed that, while Fear The Walking Dead is not a prequel, the series will take place in an earlier time frame, establishing these characters as the first to face the rising zombie apocalypse. Fear The Walking Dead is said to be looking at how families will react to the epidemic, as it first begins to manifest itself.
Now, Robert Kirkman has come forward with yet another revelation and one that may really change the dynamic of how fans look at The Walking Dead franchise. In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly , Kirkman revealed that Fear The Walking Dead will have “zero woods” as far as where the scenes are set.
“Los Angeles is such an interesting city in and of itself, just because of the vast melting pot of diversity that California has become. The urban sprawl—it covers a tremendous amount of land, and it’s got an extremely dense population, so there are a lot of things about that that lend itself well to good storytelling in the zombie apocalypse. But also, this is a city where a vast number of people come to the city to reinvent themselves, or they’re new to the city for various different reasons. It’s almost a city of immigrants inside a country of immigrants. So there’s definitely some aspects of that we’ll also be playing with as well.”
This is where the assumption that Fear The Walking Dead will be shot entirely in an urban setting comes in and, as Kirkman confirms , it seems there will be no need to venture into the surrounding forests to find dramatic environments for Fear The Walking Dead .
“Yeah, we’ll definitely be spending a lot less time in the woods,” the Walking Dead creator said. “I can say I think we’re not in the woods at all. Yeah, I am pretty sure we are in zero woods this season.”
A strictly urban environment may give Fear The Walking Dead ‘s zombies a much bigger advantage with more places for hiding and stealthy approaches. Hopefully, the living will be able to keep a leg up on their undead counterparts, when Fear The Walking Dead premieres in August on AMC.
[Featured image: Robert Kirkman and Charlie Collier courtesy of Kevin Winter/Getty Images]