It’s been revealed that the still untitled “Walking Dead” spinoff, code name “Cobalt,” takes place during the same zombie apocalypse in AMC series – only in Los Angeles. It’s said to revolve around a divorced teacher (Cliff Curtis) and a guidance counselor (Kim Dickens), who are working together and are in a relationship. The counselor has two children from a previous marriage, played by Frank Dillane and Alycia Debnam Carey.
It was as confirmed as it can get that Bleeding Cool got their hands on the pilot script, titled “Fear the Walking Dead,” that was written by Robert Kirkman and Dave Erickson.
While script pages posted online have been removed, we still learned quite a bit about the spinoff, including that it takes place at the very beginning of zombie infestation, and that the characters don’t even believe it’s real.
“The intro gives you a swerve, but the infection has not taken hold yet. The “walkers” are not yet known to the population at large, as society stands on the cusp of its own destruction,” explains the site.
The script also introduces a rather disfunctional family – “an older one than Rick’s, here are a mother and a soon-to-be-stepfather, teachers Madison and Travis, and their older teenage children, Alicia and Ian, Travis’ ex Liza and their teenage son Christopher, in a family about to break apart.”
Doing a complete 180 on the characters, the site reveals that “Drugs, illness, self-harm, set in Los Angeles, this is not so much a nuclear family as a dirty bomb. Rick’s family were torn apart, this family are there from the beginning.”
And as eluded to before, the zombie apocalypse is urban legend, and the family has no idea what’s about to broadside them.
“Because the dead are coming, An urban legend, underground, being spread from person to person,” they explain. “It plays the fact that we, the audience, know far more about what’s going on than anything else does and keeps teasing us toward the inevitable, in much the same way that Gotham does, but in the knowledge that it’s going to be over far sooner.
“These people all have plans, some in LA, some out, and we all know they are never going to pursue their dreams. This is not “The Walking Dead,” it’s somewhere else entirely.”
This all but confirms what Kirkman said in an interview stating that the new series will be startlingly different.
Here’s the new trailer for the second half of Season 5.
