Watch the Tales of the Walking Dead trailer unleashed at Comic-Con

Dalton Ross
·3 min read
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While The Walking Dead is nearing the end of its historic ratings-record-breaking run this fall, another entry from the franchise is just gearing up, and that entry has finally released its first footage. During its Friday panel in Hall H at San Diego's Comic-Con, Tales of the Walking Dead debuted a trailer for the spin-off series, and yes, there were zombies. And famous people!

Premiering August 14, Tales of the Walking Dead is an anthology series featuring six self-contained episodes that will explore gaps and areas previously uncovered on shows like the flagship entry and previous spin-offs Fear the Walking Dead and The Walking Dead: Word Beyond. AMC has described the show as "an episodic anthology with individual episodes or arcs of episodes focused on new or existing characters, backstories or other stand-alone experiences."

Some of the actors playing new characters in the Walking Dead universe include Anthony Edwards (Top Gun, Inventing Anna), Parker Posey (Lost in Space), Terry Crews (Brooklyn Nine-Nine), Poppy Liu (Hacks), Jillian Bell (Brittany Runs a Marathon), Olivia Munn (X-Men: Apocalypse), Jessie T. Usher (The Boys), Danny Ramirez (The Falcon & The Winter Soldier, Top Gun: Maverick), Loan Chabanol (Fading Gigolo) and Embeth Davidtz (Old, Ray Donovan).

In addition to the newbies, Samantha Morton will be returning to play the pre-Alpha version of her Walking Dead villain, Dee. (We already saw flashbacks on how Dee became Alpha on the original series, but it seems as if much more will be unpacked here.)

The trailer showcased several of those stories and actors, including Posey appearing as some sort of zombie denier, Edwards as a scientist studying the dead, and Alpha's daughter Lydia appearing to be hiding from her mom.

Channing Powell, who has been a writer and producer on The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead, acts as showrunner while working with Walking Dead universe chief content officer Scott M. Gimple on the series.

The panel itself, which was moderated by Talking Dead's Chris Hardwick, featured Morton, Crews (who ripped open his shirt to bounce his pecs), and Ramirez along with Powell, director and executive producer Michael Satrazemis, and Gimple.

Morton reflected from the Hall H stage on reprising her role of Alpha/Dee on Tales. "I was so gutted when Alpha died. The role of a lifetime," Morton said. "And then when I got the call that this was going to happen potentially, I was more than excited. I'm 45 years old, and as an actress and a woman, the roles kind of change in television and film.… They can be pretty rubbish. So, for me, this was a role of a lifetime."

Morton also revealed a key detail that will differentiate her Tales flashbacks form the ones that appeared on The Walking Dead ."They were Lydia's flashbacks," she explained. "So we don't know if they were true or not… This is Dee's perspective."

Crews and Ramirez spoke about being huge fans of the franchise, with Crews explaining his love of the genre went all the way back to 1968, the year he was born and also the release of seminal zombie film Night of the Living Dead: "Duane Jones, the star of Night of the Living Dead. First time I ever saw a Black hero who was literally running the show."

As for how Tales will differ from the original Walking Dead, Satrazemis talked about how this will not be one long, drawn out story, but rather self-contained adventures: "These are short, concise little films that have a beginning, middle, and an end."

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