The Walking Dead Casts Another Comic Character, Kirkman Says Spinoff Timeline Will Match Up

The Hollywood Reporter has learned of a new casting for AMC’s The Walking Dead while creator Robert Kirkman spoke to Entertainment Weekly about the new companion series, Fear the Walking Dead (still a terrible name).

THR says Corey Hawkins, playing Dr. Dre in the upcoming Straight Outta Compton, is set to play Heath, a character from the Alexandria Safe Zone. Hawkins is not a newbie to comic adaptations, he had a small role as a Navy Op in Iron Man 3, he also happens to be the first official casting for Season 6.

In other apocalypse news, Kirkman got to talking about Fear the Walking Dead, which he asserts is not really a prequel even though the events start before The Walking Dead prime, aka after the main shit goes down.

If you think about the way a zombie outbreak would happen, it would happen very organically. It would be happening for a while behind the scenes. In pockets of civilization, there would be news stories that didn’t really make sense and didn’t seem connected. And that’s kind of where we pick things up. There are a lot of things on the news, there’s a lot of chatter and paranoia and concern. And yet the vast majority of the population is ignoring these things and talking about their daily lives, and that’s kind of where we pick things up. And things ramp up very quickly from there.

And specifically on the prequel stance:

I will say that I don’t consider this show to be a prequel to The Walking Dead, because there will be a point where a certain episode of this show will line up with season 2 of The Walking Dead, and a certain episode of this show will line up with season 3 of The Walking Dead. So we will be progressing through time to the point that we do pass the initial days of the outbreak. But how fast it is that we get there? That’s just going to have to remain a mystery.

What’s your opinion on the spinoff, are you going to give it a shot?

(via Comic Book Resources)

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