Robert Kirkman Says Walking Dead Companion Series “Fundamentally Different”
Still not sold on the upcoming The Walking Dead companion series? The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman promised the show will be more than just The Walking Dead, Los Angeles version.
“I will say that this is going to be a show about family,” Kirman told Entertainment Weekly. “But it’s going to be a show about a different type of family that we haven’t explored in The Walking Dead thus far. So what we’re trying to do with The Walking Dead spinoff is keep the story as familiar as possible for people that love The Walking Dead, so you’ll get the kind of things that you expect from a Walking Dead story. But, at the same time, we’ll want to tell these stories in a completely different way with completely different people in a completely different setting that’s going to make for a fundamentally different show. I think the look and feel of The Walking Dead spinoff is going to be startlingly different.”
The yet-unnamed show will feature Cliff Curtis as a divorced teacher, Kim Dickens as a guidance counselor, and the guidance counselor’s two kids trying to survive in walker-overrun Los Angeles. So right away you can expect a slightly more nuclear family than The Walking Dead’s current setup, which except for Carl, Rick and Judith is mostly family by choice.
Kirkman said no characters from the original show will be appearing in the companion series. That seems to put to rest a rumor that Juan J. Pareja’s and his character, Morales, would be popping up in the new show.
In fact, Kirkman said the new show has so few ties to the old one and is in such a distant location that it doesn’t matter if you’ve watched the original Walking Dead.
“We want it to be a new show that can stand on its own,” Kirkman said. “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.”