‘Fear The Walking Dead’ Premieres On AMC, 5 Things You Need To Know About New Zombie Series

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“The Walking Dead” spinoff series “Fear The Walking Dead” is about to premiere tonight, Aug. 23 on AMC. The show, which takes place ahead of the zombie outbreak in the first series and is set in Los Angeles, is centered on a dysfunctional family led by Kim Dickens, playing Madison, and Cliff Curtis, playing Travis.

The actors play teachers in high school who have moved in together and have to deal with the perils of a blended marriage. Together with Madison’s teenage kids, Nick (Frank Dillane), who is addicted to heroine, and Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey), who is an overachiever, they try to make this family work.

A flu virus then strikes the city and suddenly, their problems become a lot less trivial than what is happening outside.  From there, all hell breaks loose.

Here’s what you need to know about the show:

1. There will only be six episodes to this first season. It will be a short series with shorter zombie outing. Since the outbreak is just starting. Producers, however, will not delve on revealing what caused the outbreak this season, according to Mashable.

“[Learning the origins] is not the priority in The Walking Dead; that’s not the priority in Fear The Walking Dead,” said Robert Kirkman, the show’s creator.

2. The characters on FTW know less about what’s going on than the characters on TWD.

“By the end of Season 1, we definitely know the world has changed. We definitely know that it is the end of the world as we know it. But we aren’t necessarily at the same place we were when Rick Grimes woke up in Georgia,” according to producer Dave Erickson via TV Line.

“Rick’s coma was approximately four to five weeks. If you track the trajectory of our story, the starting point’s not dissimilar. So we go maybe three weeks over the course of our first season.”

3. The “walkers” are called the “infected” in this show, and they won’t look like the zombies from the first series.

4. The show’s story development is of much slower pace that TWD. But it has been renewed for a 15-episode second season according to Coming Soon.

5. There will be no crossovers with the original series for now.

The series will air beginning 9/8 ET tonight. The first episode will be 90-minutes long.