It's hard to imagine a television series based on flesh eating zombies taking over the world basing itself in grounded reality, but apparently that's what "The Walking Dead" companion series "Fear The Walking Dead" is going to do.
"Fear The Walking Dead" executive producer Greg Nicotero has been ramping up the information give-away about the highly anticipated companion series. We know that the show will not answer some of the bigger questions, including the origin of the zombie virus. We also know that the show will differ structurally from "The Walking Dead" in terms of character development. Entertainment Weekly also reported earlier that the show will not be a straight prequel to "The Walking Dead" and that crossover elements will exist.
And now we know that the new series plans to take inspiration from real life events.
Wait, what? Was there a zombie apocalypse sometime in history that I was not aware of? Am I having a coma dream right now like Rick in Season one?
No. It's real.
Nicotero said recently that 2012's bath salt "zombie" was considered when developing the script.
"What's important in the spin-off is how people react to it. It really is a fascinating statement on current society, because we get most of our information from our iPads and our phones. There have been things that have been happening in recent years...When you hear stories like that, about a guy who attacked someone and bit their face off, imagine how we reacted to that news story at the time."
Nicotero then alluded to an Ebola-like virus possibly starting the zombie strain.
"Even in the U.S., there was a nurse who was working in Africa and who came back to the United States and refused to go to the quarantine for Ebola. So I think about stories like that and I go: Woah maybe that could have been the beginning, or may be this could have been the beginning."
"Fear The Walking Dead" will debut sometime this summer, and "The Walking Dead" returns in October.
