Just days before The Walking Dead spinoff begins filming in and around Los Angeles, executive producer Robert Kirkman is sharing new details about the drama.

The new series stars Kim Dickens and Cliff Curtis as two people who work in a Los Angeles school as a guidance counselor and teacher respectively. At this time it’s still not clear where the story begins in terms of the outbreak, but some rumors have suggested it’ll begin just before the apocalypse occurs.

Those who haven’t seen the original Walking Dead series won’t need to worry about being out of the loop if they tune in for the companion series. “We want it to be a new show that can stand on its own,” Kirkman told EW in a new interview. “You could watch The Walking Dead spinoff if you’ve never watched an episode of The Walking Dead and get a really great, rich, fulfilling experience out of it. It has to be a show that can stand on its own.”

So what is this story about? Kirkman explains that it’s a family story – one that hasn’t been seen before in a zombie apocalypse drama. “[T]his is going to be a show about family, but it’s going to be a show about a different type of family that we haven’t explored in The Walking Dead thus far. So what we’re trying to do with The Walking Dead spinoff is keep the story as familiar as possible for people that love The Walking Dead, so you’ll get the kind of things that you expect from a Walking Dead story. But, at the same time, we’ll want to tell these stories in a completely different way with completely different people in a completely different setting that’s going to make for a fundamentally different show. I think the look and feel of The Walking Dead spinoff is going to be startlingly different.”

You also won’t need to worry about reading any of The Walking Dead comics in order to understand the show. Said Kirkman, “It’s Los Angeles. It’s a corner of the world that we have never explored in the comic book series. So, theoretically, something like this could be happening in Los Angeles in the comic book series, but we don’t show you this area of the country in the comic book series. So it fits within that world, but it is all new characters, all new events and all kinds of crazy stuff.”

The lack of comic characters is a particularly important difference for this series, because many diehard fans frequently look to the comics to predict where the original Walking Dead series is heading. Without comics as a guide, all viewers will be completely in the dark. The show is also very good at keeping secrets, and we expect the same for the companion series.

And finally, Kirkman has one more big difference to share about the show: To give it a unique look, the pilot will be directed by Adam Davidson, who hasn’t been involved with The Walking Dead until now. “So that is one way that we’re trying to bring a new directing style to the show—to bring in new visual language to this show. That’s something that Adam is working really hard to bring. He’ll largely be responsible for the different look and feel that makes the show stand on it’s own.”

The Walking Dead companion series doesn’t have a premiere date but is expected to begin sometime in 2015.

It’ll be interesting to see how they use the original Walking Dead to promote the spinoff. Perhaps the pilot will premiere after an episode of Dead, and then the show will air a full season during a different time of the year.