‘Fear the Walking Dead’: Is there a fear of too much ‘Walking Dead’?
As of right now, it feels somewhat clear that pop culture is being slowly taken over by all things zombie. You’ve got the flagship “Walking Dead” show on the air, other programs and movies capitalizing on the trend, “Talking Dead” as an aftershow, and to top all of it off, you’ve then got “Fear the Walking Dead” coming out on August 23. This is a prequel to the events in the flagship show, or at least it is at first. It will air six episodes this summer, but will have a much-larger order in season 2 and that leads to us wondering the following: Are we really trying too hard to deliver the zombie goods?
Of course, Robert Kirkman is smart enough to know that there is a concern of over-saturation out there for this show, and in addressing the subject to Entertainment Weekly in a recent interview, all he had to say was the following:
“The two shows are so different. If this was the spin-off Michonne show or Daryl Dixon show, yeah. But Fear The Walking Dead is a great appetizer to season 6 that will hopefully serve to just make fans that much more excited for the return of the characters they’ve grown to love for going on six years. I’m confident we’re doing this the right way. We’re building a wing on the house. It’s nice, it’s got a library, it’s adding to the overall value of the thing. We’re not just throwing a second story on top hoping the ground level can suddenly support the additional weight. We don’t borrow from the original, we don’t detract from it in any way. Fear The Walking Dead adds to the overall tapestry of The Walking Dead — it’s another glimpse into a hopefully fascinating world that stands on its own.”
The big test is going to come with the “Fear the Walking Dead” premiere. We don’t really expect that it will be anywhere close to the original series, but so long as it generates solid ratings and the numbers for the flagship show stay relatively steady, all will be fine. There’s always a slight chance that “Walking Dead” fans will feel overwhelmed and bail on the original show because of it, but we really want to emphasize “slight” there since you really don’t need to watch the prequel show to understand what is going on.
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