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Thanks to Bleeding Cool, we have some new information regarding AMC's upcoming spinoff series for The Walking Dead. They managed to get ahold of the script for the pilot episode, and it has been confirmed that the series will be called Fear the Walking Dead, not Cobalt as previously reported.
We have some additional story details on the series as well, and they confirm rumors that the series will be a prequel set in the time where the zombie outbreak is in its very early stages. If you don't want to know any more than that, turn back now because there are SPOILERS from here on out.
The pilot was written by Robert Kirkman and Dave Erickson, and when the series starts out the zombie outbreak is being treated as a rumor or urban legend. No one really actually believes that it's happening, but of course, it turns out that everything is true.
The script pages, which have since been removed from the site, feature characters discussing the outbreak while watching footage of zombie attacks on an iPad. The report had this to say about the script and the angle of the series:
"Because the dead are coming, An urban legend, underground, being spread from person to person. It plays the fact tat [sic] we, the audience, know far more about what’s going on than anything else does and keeps teasing us toward the inevitable, in much the same way that Gotham does, but in the knowledge that it’s going to be over far sooner."
They also report that the pilot introduces us to a dysfunctional family at the center of all the madness. They describe the family as follows:
"...an older one than Rick’s, here are a mother and a soon-to-be-stepfather, teachers Madison and Travis, and their older teenage children, Alicia and Ian, Travis’ ex Liza and their teenage son Christopher, in a family about to break apart. Drugs, illness, self-harm, set in Los Angeles, this is not so much a nuclear family as a dirty bomb. Rick’s family were torn apart, this family are there from the beginning."
I really like the setting of the new series, and it seems like it's going to make for an intense series. I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out! Kirkman said this about it in a previous interview:
“We want it to be a new show that can stand on its own. You could watch The Walking Dead spinoff if you’ve never watched an episode of The Walking Dead and get a really great, rich, fulfilling experience out of it. It has to be a show that can stand on its own. I think that’s what we’ve accomplished, and we start filming in a couple of days. I’m really excited.
"It’s Los Angeles. It’s a corner of the world that we have never explored in the comic book series. So, theoretically, something like this could be happening in Los Angeles in the comic book series, but we don’t show you this area of the country in the comic book series. So it fits within that world, but it is all new characters, all new events and all kinds of crazy stuff.”
