Fear The Walking Dead Season 2 To Be 15 Episodes, Feature Larger-Scale Zombie Outbreak

The long-since-announced second season of AMC's Fear the Walking Dead will more than double the length of its upcoming first season, clocking in at fifteen episodes, the network announced today at the TCAs.

The season will also escalate the stakes, following a first season in which showrunners say there won't be a full-scale zombie apocalypse.

"We purposely built the show a bit more slowly than the original," said showrunner Dave Erickson at the Television Critics Association today (via TVLine). "We call them 'infected' and not 'walkers.' There's absolutely going to be walkers, [but] there will be a build. By design, we tried to make it as much about the anxiety and paranoia and tension that goes along with this outbreak as about the actual confrontations with the zombies."

He added that the full-scale outbreak would wait until Season Two, but added that by the Season One finale, the world will have changed drastically already.

The series will debut in the U.S. Sunday, August 23rd at 9 p.m. ET/PT with an extended 90-minute episode. A special episode of "Talking Dead," hosted by Chris Hardwick, will follow the season one finale on Sunday, October 4th at 10 p.m. ET/PT.

Living in the same universe as The Walking Dead, Fear the Walking Dead is a gritty drama that explores the onset of the undead apocalypse through the lens of a fractured family. Set in a city where people come to escape, shield secrets, and bury their pasts, a mysterious outbreak threatens to disrupt what little stability high school guidance counselor Madison Clark (Kim Dickens) and English teacher Travis Manawa (Cliff Curtis) have managed to assemble. The everyday pressure of blending two families while dealing with resentful, escapist, and strung out children takes a back seat when society begins to break down. A forced evolution, a necessary survival of the fittest takes hold, and our dysfunctional family must either reinvent themselves or

"Fear the Walking Dead" is executive produced by Robert Kirkman, Gale Anne Hurd, Greg Nicotero, David Alpert and showrunner David Erickson and produced by AMC Studios. The series stars Kim Dickens as Madison, Cliff Curtis as Travis, Frank Dillane as Nick, Alycia Debnam-Carey as Alicia, Elizabeth Rodriguez as Liza, Ruben Blades as Daniel, Mercedes Mason as Ofelia and Lorenzo James Henrie as Chris.