Until today, we have not been offered a lot of details about the new The Walking Dead spin-off. We know that it’s being filmed in Hopewell, Virginia. We know that it centers around the first generation of kids to come of age during the zombie apocalypse. We know who the cast members are [including Annet Mahendru from The Americans (above)], and we know that the pilot will feature a plane crash. We also know it’s operating under the working title, “Monument.”
Now, we know a lot more about the series thanks to a preview featuring a mix of cast members and production art, which gives us an idea of the premise behind Monument:
As you can see, this new generation of characters are entering into an existing zombie apocalypse after having been sheltered from it their entire lives. I suspect that whatever isolated community they lived in likely fell apart (perhaps due to the plane crash?), forcing the characters out into the “real” world, where they discover for the first time that the “real world” is a rundown apocalypse full of deadly creatures and lacking in the the necessities of life and whatever pleasures they experienced in their community. In other words, it’s sort of like what might happen to the denizens of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village if they walked out of their community and discovered that the outside world is overrun with zombies.
Granted, that’s a cool concept up to a point. Once they figure it out and acclimate themselves to the zombie apocalypse, does Monument because just another The Walking Dead series, only with different characters?
We’ll find out when the series debuts in the Spring, presumably following the completion of the tenth season of The Walking Dead.
