"Fear the Walking Dead," the companion series to AMC's "The Walking Dead," shows fans what happened during the early days of the zombie apocalypse, before people were aware that loved ones and friends were coming back from the dead.
What you may not know is that the show was partly inspired by a series "The Walking Dead" creator Robert Kirkman was working on prior to 2010 with "Fear the Walking Dead" co-creator Dave Erickson called "Five Year."
"It was a pre-apocalyptic family drama," Erickson told Tech Insider of "Five Year." "Basically, it’s the meteor is coming, you have five years to live, what do you do in the time you have left? I had not read the [Walking Dead] comic at that point."
Erickson said he and Kirkman met after Erickson wrote a treatment for a pilot of "Five Year." He was then brought on to write a pilot with Kirkman for Sony Pictures television. The show never came to fruition, though.
"That was a good experience, and we just sort of stayed in touch," recalled Erickson. "I danced around working on the original show and never did. When Robert had the idea to do the companion piece, he called, and the timing worked out."
Erickson says while working on the premiere of "The Walking Dead," "Five Year" helped lay some of the basic groundwork for the series.
"The challenge in that pilot ['Five Year'] … it is very much about the family dynamic because the threat is there, you know that. It’s more aggressive obviously in ‘The Walking Dead’ than in ‘Fear’ because the threat is made manifest fairly quickly, and there are zombies that are trying to kill you. Whereas, we were doing the show which was a little more … it was slightly more esoteric because you know the end of the world is coming but it’s not like there’s a meteor attacking you every single episode," said Erickson. "But yeah ... the confusion, the complication, the heartache that goes with any family dynamic. I think, yeah, very much there are elements that are in that pilot that I think we used in the pilot and in the show ['Fear the Walking Dead']."
If you tuned into the season premiere, there was actually a nod to "Five Year" in plain sight.
Erickson told us to keep an eye on the chalkboard in Travis' (Cliff Curtis) classroom.
When Travis begins talking to his class about Jack London's short story "To Build a Fire" look at the upper right hand corner of his chalkboard. There's a little note that says "My 5 year plan." On the series, it's in reference to prom, but it's something the show's characters may want to have in mind now that society is crumbling around them.
"Fear the Walking Dead" airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC.
