Robert Kirkman Chats About Fear The Walking Dead
IGN interviewed Robert Kirkman recently about the development process regarding his upcoming Walking Dead spinoff, Fear The Walking Dead. Here’s the Cliffs Notes version of what he revealed.*
The show is Dave Erickson’s product as much as it is Robert’s: “Working with Dave, he and I came up with all these characters and created this world, this Los Angeles version of Walking Dead. There are no leftovers or B-sides. These aren’t people that didn’t fit into Walking Dead or the comic or anything like that. This is an all-new cast created specifically for this show.”
Kirkman confirms family will be a theme, but expands on just what kind of family it is: “What we have is Madison (Kim Dickens) and her family and we have Travis (Cliff Curtis) and his family. They’re building a relationship. They’re getting ready to be married. Civilization is crumbling around them. They both have kids from separate marriages. It’s just an interesting family dynamic to deal with in any story. But having all of the intricacies and struggles that come from that kind of family dynamic, and setting it against the fall of civilization and in the face of the zombie apocalypse just makes things that more interesting.”
More spinoffs are possible, but wait until he’s finished with this one first: “I wouldn’t necessarily rule it out even though I currently have no plans to do that right now. Everybody is working really hard on Fear the Walking Dead and trying to make it the best thing that it can be. Let’s see how Fear the Walking Dead does first and then we’ll have nine spinoffs and it’ll be great.”
Our Zombies Are Different: “They’re not going to be as decayed, and they’re not going to be as monstrous, which is going to make the violence in the show and the different things that happen that much more startling. Because we’re going to be dealing with a much more human walker. So while there is going to be a tremendous amount of paranoia and psychological trauma, I think there’s not going to be any loss of zombie action or excitement in this show. We’ll be bringing in the best of both worlds.”
So are they going to look like this?
*For those readers who are too blasted young, Cliffs Notes were a product sold in colleges that contained the bare minimum of information regarding a piece of literature you were likely to be tested on. If you were going to cheat prior to the Internet’s prevalence, you had to pay money.