We're getting ever closer to the arrival of The Walking Dead 'companion show', Fear The Walking Dead, and EW have secured three new photos from the premiere. The images give us a look at "Alicia" (a high-achieving teenager played by Alycia Debnam-Carey), along with her mother "Madison" (Kim Dickens), and Madison's boyfriend "Travis" (Cliff Curtis). They also heard from showrunner Dave Erickson, who revealed that "family drama" would play a key part in the series.
“Ultimately, it’s a family drama. One of the things that Robert [Kirkman] and I discussed from the very beginning was, we’re starting a little earlier in the apocalypse. And what that allowed us to do in the pilot and season 1 is establish our core family, establish the problems and the conflicts that they have, and really let that be the initial world that we live in. And we layer in the onset of the apocalypse, we layer in our first walkers, but it’s really an effort to exacerbate the problems that already exist with Kim Dickens’ character and Cliff Curtis’ character and their sort of dysfunctional blended family. It’s really filtering the apocalypse through that.”
While putting focus on the characters and their relationships with one another will likely help create a much better show, many old-school zombie fans may feel begrudged by a lack of walker action. Set during the early days of the apocalypse, there's probably plenty of chaos and danger ahead for these characters. Hopefully the writers can find a nice balance between the two.
You can check out the other two images below, and be sure to leave your thoughts about this spin-off series in the comments section. Fear The Walking Dead will air in August on AMC.