Fans of the AMC series 'The Walking Dead' should be elated for the new spin-off show set to air later this summer.

It's been said to depict the events when the outbreak initially took hold of the world and give viewers a very different perspective on the epidemic.

Thanks to an interview with showrunner Dave Erickson with THR, we now get some in depth details on what we can expect.

He begins with speaking on the timeframe and how it differs from the original show:

"We are loosely covering the period of time that [The Walking Dead's] Rick (Andrew Lincoln) was in his coma in season one. We're able to watch and experience the things that he missed. It's more of a parallel story than a prequel; imagine the opening where Rick gets shot and goes in his coma - that day was probably very close to our day one. We're playing out the idea of what was going on in the country and the world until he woke up, stepped outside and it's welcome to the apocalypse. That's why a 'companion piece' has been the phrase used at the network. It's not a prequel in the sense of Better Call Saul, where we're jumping back six, seven years. It does tie very specifically into the pilot of the original. 'Prequel' is not the right word; it's kind of its own strange, hybrid thing. I wish I had a better word."

This is the central theme according to Erickson:

"For us, it's actually one of the reasons why Los Angeles was so important to us. It's very much about identity and reinvention. The thing about California, or L.A. specifically, is that it is a place where many people - aside from the native Angelenos - go to in order to rebuild, reinvent or bury what's in their past. Many of our characters, as we will come to discover, have gone through some very unsavory things - histories that they try to bury. With the onset of the apocalypse, they're going to have choices to make as to whether they can tap into the darker sides of themselves things that they tried to distance themselves from in order to survive. They also end up going back to the quotidian of it. In a blended family, you're also dealing with people who have been in marriages and have lost loved ones; have been in marriages and gone through divorce; and they're going through their own identity shifts when we first meet them within the family drama world of things. Then, as everything becomes more serious, you're forced to shift, adjust and become the thing that you hated. There are some lovely intersections between some of the thematics on the original show, where at a certain point doing the right thing becomes the absolute wrong thing. We're going to start with some relationships, specifically the Travis and Madison relationship - which is beautiful and everything seems to be harmonious and they're truly in love - and we're going to put them through the ringer over the course of season one."

The full interview can be found at THR.