Fear The Walking Dead’s first (of many?) Comic-Con panels took place Friday afternoon at San Diego Comic-Con and played host to the show’s first trailer.
The new companion series appeared in Comic-Con’s biggest venue, Hall H, immediately following The Walking Dead season 6’s panel. Fans of the original Walking Dead series decided to stick around to see what AMC had to offer with Fear (though, admittedly, Hall H is remaining packed with the same people all day because Star Wars has a presentation in there tonight).
Fear The Walking Dead’s trailer does not disappoint and plays like a movie — the lead characters struggle to understand the mystery illness slowly taking over Los Angeles. Watch below:
Great trailer, right? The preview shows that the humans will be struggling to understand these zombies once they eventually start showing up — in one scene, the police keep shooting someone but the person refuses to die.
“Robert wanted to have a show that was very distinct and different from the other show,” Dave Erickson explained during Fear The Walking Dead’s panel on Friday. “We wanted a major metropolis, a major city.”
They also set the show in Los Angeles because it has unique storytelling opportunities. “It’s a place of reinvention. It’s a place to become something new, and that thematic plays through most of our characters,” he explained, noting the characters will each be facing their own demons.
Fear The Walking Dead’s first season has six episodes and will take place over roughly 2 – 4 weeks of the 5 weeks that Rick was in his coma in the original Walking Dead.
Since the outbreak will occur at a slow pace, walkers don’t appear until later in the season, Erickson briefly mentioned. “We get to show the process by which the city goes down.”
The showrunners revealed that the characters in Fear The Walking Dead will be in denial about the seriousness of the outbreak as people are in the real world when diseases like Ebola begin to spread. Producer Gale Anne Hurd noted that many people in the real world tend to downplay the seriousness of any outbreak and assume the media are overhyping it. The same thing will happen in Fear.
The zombies will also be looking different because the un-dead will be freshly turned. Their skin is much more in tact, but the blood is still very present.
Fear The Walking Dead will premiere Sunday, August 23 on AMC.
Earlier today we also received a trailer for The Walking Dead season 6 which premieres October 11 — take a look!