Dead in the Water: Fear the Walking Dead’s Zombie Submarine Spinoff Still Surfacing at AMC

Fear the Walking Dead co-showrunner Ian Goldberg says previously announced digital spin-off series Dead in the Water is far from dead in the water at AMC Networks. Spinning out of Season 6 of Fear, which ends with Teddy Maddox (John Glover) turning Texas into ground zero of the nuclear zombie apocalypse with submarine-launched warheads, Dead in the Water reveals the backstory of the USS Pennsylvania and the 150 zombified crew members entombed aboard the beached vessel. The submarine is the setting of the penultimate episode of the season, “USS Pennsylvania,” where Teddy and former sub weapons officer Riley (Nick Stahl) fire the ten nuclear warheads that detonated across the Lone Star State to end Season 6.

“A little bit of this has leaked out into the news, but we are working on telling the backstory of the USS Pennsylvania. I can’t say much other than we’re figuring it out right now,” Goldberg said during a recent live stream with TWDUniverse on Twitch. “We have a story, we have a script, and we’re just putting the pieces in place.”

Goldberg and fellow showrunner Andrew Chambliss produce the digital spin-off with Fear executive producer and Walking Dead Universe chief content officer Scott Gimple. Jacob Pinion, who wrote the six-episode Fear Season 5 digital tie-in series The Althea Tapes and the Season 6 episode “Damage From the Inside,” scripts Dead in the Water.

“It’s something that we very much hope to make happen and soon because there’s a really cool story of how that crew that we met in Episode 615 [‘USS Pennslyvania’] met that fate, and a few other pieces of the mythology,” Goldberg said. “I won’t say too much beyond that, but I think it’ll be really cool.”

Asked to reveal a potential time frame for the Season 6 spin-off, Goldberg answered, “We don’t know yet, but I know that we and AMC want to make it happen as soon as possible. So as soon as we have more concrete info, we’ll let everyone know.”

Dead in the Water “tells the story of a submarine crew fighting for survival, cut off from the surface world just as the apocalypse hits, becoming a nuclear-fueled walker-filled death trap with no way out,” according to its synopsis. AMC first announced the digital original scripted series in March.

This isn’t AMC’s first time wading into digital series waters for Fear: past season tie-ins include the 16-chapter mini-series Flight 462 and Passage.

Season 7 of Fear the Walking Dead premieres later this year on AMC. Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter for all things The Walking Dead Universe.