‘Walking Dead’ Companion Series Official
UPDATE: AMC announced Friday that the Walking Dead spin-off will be called Fear the Walking Dead. Season One will begin this summer, with Season Two beginning in 2016.
Months after AMC announced its intention to create a companion show to The Walking Dead, the network has confirmed that the series is officially happening, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The network brought on writer-producer Dave Erickson (Sons of Anarchy, Low Winter Sun) as showrunner, executive producer and co-writer, according to Uproxx. He joins a team for the show that includes Dead creator Robert Kirkman and producer Gale Anne Hurd.
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The still-untitled series was previously rumored to be a prequel that would focus on the events that led up to the main series’ apocalyptic storyline. But neither the network nor the producers have hinted at what the show will be about other than the fact that it won’t technically be a “spinoff” since it won’t feature characters from The Walking Dead TV series. Uproxx theorizes that the new series will be set in the same apocalypse timeline. Last year, creator Robert Kirkman confirmed that the show will feature an entirely new cast and location, but offered little else.
“We are going to see an entirely different corner of The Walking Dead,” Kirkman told IGN in an October interview. “It definitely won’t be set in Georgia – I can at least say that. It’s important to us that this show exists on its own. The spinoff has to be a show worthy of existing, or else we’ve all sold out. So that’s something we’re all working hard towards doing, and I think we can pull it off. I think that the ideal situation is, when you’re watching the spinoff, you’re like, ‘Wow, this is a really awesome show.’ The whole other show doesn’t need to exist for this show to be cool and stand on its own.”
Although AMC originally planned to launch the series in 2015, the network has not offered any further details on when it would premiere.