Much of The Walking Deads magic comes from FX legend Greg Nicotero and the terrific team behind him. Their zombie design is intricate and varied, hinting at a process many of us barely understand. Its always fun then to hear a little about the thought and research behind FX work, how it ultimately informs what we see. Speaking to the upcoming spinoff, Fear the Walking Dead, Nicotero has revealed the location will have as much of a bearing on the zombies as it does the main cast.
Fear the Walking Dead happens almost before our show [The Walking Dead] even premiered. One thing that we play up on the show is the environment and how that plays on the walkers, Nicotero tells Melty. In Georgia, its very humid and sunny and we take that into consideration. In Los Angeles, its a lot more dry, so we have had conversations about what that would do to the look of the Walkers.
Speaking further, Nicotero briefly talks the themes of the series, namely how the public responds to the start of an emergency and pandemic. Whats important in the spinoff 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 so 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, imagining how we reacted to that news story at the time. Even in the United States, there was a nurse who was working in Africa and came back to the United States and refused to go into quarantine. I think about stories like that and go, Wow, maybe that couldve been the beginning. In a TV show like Fear the Walking Dead, you get to ask those same questions.
Fear the Walking Dead stars Kim Dickens, Cliff Curtis, Frank Dillane and Alycia Debnam Carey. The series, produced by Dave Erickson, Robert Kirkman, Gale Anne Hurd, Greg Nicotero and David Alpert will premiere this summer on AMC. It was recently announced the series will also stream exclusively on Hulu.
