Netflix Enters the Zombie Apocalypse With New Series ‘Black Summer’
It seems that Netflix is trying to tap into the success of The Walking Dead as they continue to expand their original programming catalog. The streaming giant has just placed an eight-episode straight to series order for a zombie apocalypse drama starring Hart of Dixie’s Jaime King titled Black Summer.
According to Deadline, Black Summer will follow King as “a mother, torn from her daughter, who embarks upon a harrowing journey, stopping at nothing to find her. Thrust alongside a small group of American refugees, she must brave a hostile new world and make brutal decisions during the most deadly summer of a zombie apocalypse.” Despite the fact that The Walking Dead takes place in the south, the weather hasn’t ever been an element they’ve focused on and it seems that Black Summer’s narrative will definitely be informed by it in some way.
SyFy’s Z Nation co-executive-producers Karl Schaefer and John Hyams will be helming Black Summer as co-showrunners. Schaefer has previously worked on projects such as Eureka, Ghost Whisperer and Eerie, Indiana and Hyams has directed episodes of Chicago P.D., The Originals, Z Nation, and recently directed the 2018 film All Square.
King is best known for her starring role on The CW’s Hart Of Dixie where she played southern belle Lemon Breeland for four seasons from 2011-2015. Since then she has appeared in movies such as Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, Barely Lethal, The Misletoe Promise, Bitch, and Ocean’s Eight.
Black Summer is the second apocalyptic series about a lost and found mission to be picked up by Netflix this month. Earlier we reported that they had ordered Daybreak to series, which follows a young man named Josh who goes searching for his missing girlfriend, Sam, in a post-apocalyptic California. That series is based on Brian Ralph’s comic of the same name and is expected to hit Netflix sometime next year.
What do you think of Black Summer? Does that sound like the kind of zombie drama you would want to watch? Let us know!
Having studied Media & Writing at James Madison University, I always knew that I wanted to do some type of creative writing, but being able to write about zombies, Starks, and superheroes on a daily basis for Fan Fest is my actual dream. While I probably shouldn’t be as proud as I am to be so similar to Nick Miller, I do hope to one day write my own “Pepperwood Chronicles’.
