Look, you don’t cast D.J. Qualls in your apocalyptic zombie show unless you’re going for a certain tone: a goofy tone. Syfy seems to be taking on The Walking Dead from another angle with the upcoming Z Nation, going for more splatter than drama – at least according to the first trailer.
The 13-episode series, which makes its debut in September, follows a group of heroes forced to transport the one man who appears to be immune to the zombie virus that struck the world three years before. The series stars Harold Perrineau (Constantine, Lost), Tom Everett Scott (That Thing You Do, Beauty and the Beast), DJ Qualls (Supernatural, Road Trip), Michael Welch, Kellita Smith, Anastasia Baranova, Russel Hodgkingson, and Keith Allan. Eerie, Indiana and Eureka producer Karl Schaefer will act as both the executive producer and showrunner for the series.
And of course it’s a send up of The Walking Dead. The series was produced by mockbuster studio The Asylum who will, any day now, be pitching “Mad Guys,” “Accurate Blood,” and “Hey, We Couldn’t Think of a Name for Game of Thrones That Wouldn’t Get Us Sued.”
Still, it’s great to see SyFy continuing to push for more original scripted programming. While they were kind of late to the bandwagon, the network went after a lot of reality TV over the last five years, launching series like Who Wants to be a Superhero and Ghost Hunters to varying levels of success. While the network hasn’t completely given up on real people speaking into cameras, in recent months they’ve announced tons of new original series, with the Tricia Helfer-starring Ascension and a second season of Helix on the way.
Z Nation premieres Friday, September 12 at 10 on SyFy.
[via Entertainment Weekly]
