Fear The Walking Dead, like all other zombie dramas before it, owes a debt to George A. Romero and his seminal classic, Night of the Living Dead.
But there’s another undead IP that influenced AMC’s companion series, and that’s The Evil Dead. First released in 1981, Sam Raimi’s genre-defining hit made an immediate impact on horror fans with its deeply unsettling poster design, which showed a bony hand rising up from the grave and latching onto a hapless woman. Chills.
As far as imagery goes, it’s unforgettable, and over the years, we’ve seen countless works of fiction adopt a similar layout – that being a cold, dead hand reaching up to the night sky – and below, you’ll see that Fear The Walking Dead has gone old-school in anticipation of its fourth season.
Pegged to arrive mid-way through April, Fear The Walking Dead season 4 has already garnered a huge amount of attention for its decision to incorporate Morgan Jones into the equation. Indeed, it’s part of the reason why Greg Nicotero (h/t ComicBook.com) believes FTWD will deliver a TV crossover like no other:
I can tell you that Andrew [Chambliss] and Ian [Goldberg], the showrunners, have put together an amazing team of writers. The scripts are fantastic. I couldn’t be more happy with the direction of the story, where they’re going, the new casting, all the new people that have come into it. I’m really enjoying it, you know? I’ve been down to Austin a couple of times. I’m much more involved in Fear the Walking Dead than I have been in the past, because of the fact that I have a little bit of time in between Walking Dead.
He continued:
And as a matter of fact, I was reading the mid-season premiere script for Fear the Walking Dead right before this call. So we’re really, really dedicated to that show and the characters. And I think people are going to be really, really excited about it.
The fourth season of AMC’s Fear The Walking Dead is set to begin its rollout on April 15th, when Morgan Jones will begin interacting with the Clark Family and their dwindling roster of allies. And if newfound showrunners Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg are to be believed, viewers ought to expect the unexpected.