The Walking Dead spinoff has found its first survivors of the zombie apocalypse, and it looks like AMC might be trying to appeal to a younger crowd with its companion series.
According to Deadline , Alycia Debnam Carey and Frank Dillane have been cast in Robert Kirkman’s spinoff of The Walking Dead . Debnam Carey is an Australian actress who recently appeared in the tornado-filled thriller Into the Storm . The movie also starred Sarah Wayne Callies, the actress who played Rick Grimes’ now-deceased wife Lori on The Walking Dead .
Frank Dillane is probably best-known for playing 16-year-old Tom Riddle (aka Lord Voldemort) in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince . He’s 23 years old and Alycia Debnam Carey is 19 years old, so younger viewers will have more characters to identify with this time around.
However, Frank Dillane and Alycia Debnam Carey won’t be playing the main characters in The Walking Dead spinoff. Deadline reports that the series will revolve around “a male divorced teacher and a female guidance counselor.” Dillane and Debnam Carey will play the woman’s teenage children: a boy who used to abuse drugs and an ambitious, level-headed girl.
Back in September, the Inquisitr reported on the character descriptions for The Walking Dead companion series. Frank Dillane’s character will likely be named Nick Tompkins, and his character was previously described as a scared screw-up. Alycia Debnam Carey’s character was given the name Ashley Tompkins. According to TV Line , “her ambition is in direct proportion to her older brother’s failures.” Their mother Nancy was described as a single mom who “looks like the girl next door, but there’s an edge to her.”
The male divorced teacher mentioned above is likely a character named Sean Cabrera. He has a smart but rebellious teen son named Cody. Sean and Nancy’s families will be joined by Andrea, “a somewhat wilted flower child” trying to recover from a bad marriage.
The Walking Dead companion series has tentatively been titled Cobalt , but there’s no word on whether this title has any significance. Because the spinoff will be set in a new location, it could be a hint about where the series will take place. There’s an old cobalt mine in Idaho called Blackbird mine, so perhaps the survivors will be from the land of potatoes.
There were recent reports that the spinoff would be set in Pennsylvania . According to Lancaster Online , these rumors were based on supposed AMC casting calls posted on Craigslist. However, these casting calls are most likely a hoax, and they might even be a scam to score money from wannabe zombie extras.
Cobalt will likely be set during the early days of the zombie virus outbreak, so expect to see more of the living in the new series.
Based on these details about The Walking Dead spinoff, are you already hoping that AMC will decide to order it to series?
[Image credits: Bauer Griffin via Zimbio , Frank-Dillane ]