The Walking Dead Spinoff Has Been Picked Up, Details And Your First Look Here
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There’s a lot of craziness going down on The Walking Dead right now as the survivors do their best to settle into their new digs and get comfortable, which is not always an easy task considering damn near everyone and everything they’ve encountered over the previous five seasons has tried to kill them in one way or another. But you can forget all about that for the moment, as the long gestating spinoff, maybe called Cobalt maybe called Fear the Walking Dead, has been picked up for multiple seasons and we now have our first look at the upcoming series.
Deadline reports that AMC has given the go ahead for two seasons of the new series, which marks the second consecutive time that they’ve doled out multi-season commitments to shows that have not even aired yet. Recently, they pulled the same maneuver with Breaking Bad offshoot Better Call Saul, and this latest makes sense by the same logic: both are connected to massively popular shows, so why the hell wouldn’t you want to capitalize on that momentum?
The new series is set in Los Angeles and begins at the onset of the zombie outbreak, which will provide a different perspective from the flagship series. Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) was in a coma for all of that and wakes to a world gone crazy, while this time we’ll get to see the world go down in flames. Like its predecessor, season 1 will consist of six hour-long episodes. It is tentatively slated to debut this summer, though probably later on so it can lead up to The Walking Dead, which usually premieres around Halloween. Season 2 is expected to consist of more episodes and will debut sometime in 2016.
The new show stars Cliff Curtis (Live Free or Die Hard) as teacher Sean Cabrera and follows his loose-knit, sort-of-family-unit that includes guidance counselor Nancy Tompkins (Kim Dickens, Gone Girl), and her two teenage kids—the drugged out screw up Nick (Frank Dillane, Harry Potter) and ambitious Ashley (Alycia Debnam Carey, The 100). You can see three of the four in these photos. It’s possible they could go by different names, but this is what we’re working with at the moment. We’ve long wondered how people outside of the American south survived, and now we’re finally getting that.
AMC President Charlie Collier says:
We take incredibly seriously the notion of building a satisfying companion series to the number one show on television. From the beginning of The Walking Dead on AMC, we’ve been asked questions about what was going on in other parts of the zombie apocalypse, and what it looked like as the world really did ‘turn.’ Through this new series, we’re going to find out. We respectfully follow the request of Monty Python as we bring out (the latest of) our Dead.
Dave Erickson co-created the show and co-wrote the pilot with franchise creator and general bigwig Robert Kirkman, and serves as the executive producer and showrunner. Do you think they’re jumping the gun giving this series a two-season order, or does it make perfect sense given the popularity of the original? Is this something you’re interested in checking out or do you plan to skip this one?
