'By the end of season 1, we definitely know the world has changed, but we're not at the same place where Rick woke up,' executive producer David Erickson says of the new series.
- August 1, 2015
AceShowbiz -
"Fear the Walking Dead" won't catch up with events in the first season of "The Walking Dead" that soon. At the Television Critics Association press tour in Beverly Hills on Friday, July 31, executive producer David Erickson said that the upcoming series would explore the moment when the virus begins to spread in the whole first season.
"We purposely built the show a bit more slowly than the original," said showrunner/EP Dave Erickson. "We call them 'infected' and not 'walkers.' There's absolutely going to be walkers, [but] there will be a build." He explained, "By design, we tried to make it as much about the anxiety and paranoia and tension that goes along with this outbreak as about the actual confrontations with the zombies."
Erickson went on sharing, "By the end of season 1, we definitely know the world has changed, but we're not at the same place where Rick [Andrew Lincoln] woke up. There's still a window of time, we'll have some real estate left. Rick's coma was about 4 to 5 weeks. If you track our story, we probably go three weeks over the course of our first season."
"There is a time that may come that we catch up, and there may be a season where we do a major time cut," he added. "The thinking right now in season 1 and the writers' room for season 2 isn't about how do we intersect them how or catch up with the original show?"
He, moreover, insisted that "there's no crossover plans right now." Erickson stated, "We're telling parallel narratives that live under the same mythological umbrella... but there's no intention of having Easter eggs or character references."
While "The Walking Dead" showed very little of the military reaction, the spin-off will see more of the military presence. Erickson said, "When Rick exits the hospital, you see the presence of military and MASH units. We're never going to tell the story from a military perspective, but we will see a military presence and how first responders reacted and what they did to protect their own families."
"Fear the Walking Dead" debuts Sunday, August 23 at 9 P.M. ET on AMC. The network has announced a 15-episode order for the second season.
