This Sunday, August 23, AMC will premiere Fear The Walking Dead, the much anticipated spinoff/companion series to The Walking Dead. Although the series that became Fear The Walking Dead was announced in September 2013, it was in development long before that. The reason is simple: The Walking Dead is one of the biggest basic cable hits of all-time. And AMC wants to expand on that success before it has a chance to cool off.
There is an inherent risk in putting out a second Walking Dead series. If fans reject it, Fear The Walking Dead could damage AMC’s most valuable brand. The early reviews for Fear The Walking Dead have largely been positive, so there is also a very good chance that the audience will embrace it. Although the first season will only be six episodes, a second season of fifteen episodes has already been announced for 2016.
Robert Kirkman co-created The Walking Dead comic book series that inspired the AMC TV show. Kirkman also co-created Fear The Walking Dead with screenwriter and executive producer Dave Erickson. While neither The Walking Dead comic nor the TV series ever depicted the origins of the zombie plague that devastated the world, Fear The Walking Dead will take place in Los Angeles just as civilization is starting to fall. On this series, the walkers are known as “the infected,” and the people don’t yet realize that the life they knew is already gone.
Related: Watch The Opening Scene From Fear The Walking Dead
Erickson and Kirkman have also added an intriguing storyline to this series. While speaking to Hitfix, Erickson indicated that a series-long arc will chart the trajectory of a character who becomes very much like The Governor from The Walking Dead or Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now. In other words, this show is really about the making of a very human monster.
“When I think about models for the show, Apocalypse Now is something I was thinking about when I was writing it. I was thinking about madness. The idea that when the world changes as profoundly as it does on our show, and your belief system has to adjust to survive that, at what point does that [drive you over the brink}?”
“Colonel Kurtz embraces a belief system that for us is inhumane and immoral, but it makes total sense to him,” continued Erickson. “I want to explore one of our characters going through that process and becoming that thing. And having the core relationships in the show build on those dynamics.”
Related: AMC Renews Fear The Walking Dead For Second Season
But for that storyline to work, we need to care about the main characters. At its core, Fear The Walking Dead is about two broken families that were joined together, and another family with little, if any, connection to the other two.
Before some of these cast members inevitably become zombie chow, click over to the next page for a quick guide to the main characters from Fear The Walking Dead Season 1!
Photo Credit: AMC
