The companion series to AMC's "The Walking Dead" has discovered its first survivors.

Announced in September 2013, the spinoff created by Robert Kirkman and Dave Erickson is set during the same zombie apocalypse as "The Walking Dead" but features new characters and new locations.

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Deadline reports the series, "aka 'Cobalt,'" will center on a maledivorced teacher and a female guidance counselor. Frank Dillane ("In the Heart of the Sea," "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince") will play the woman's son, who's struggling with a drug problem, and Alycia Debnam Carey ("Into the Storm") her ambitious daughter.

The website notes Debnam Carey was previously cast in AMC's rejected sci-fi/fantasy pilot "Galyntine."

The cable channel ordered a pilot for the "Walking Dead" companion series in September. It will be executive produced by "The Walking Dead's" Kirkman, Gale Anne Hurd and David Alpert, with Erickson serving as showrunner and pilot co-writer. Adam Davidson ("Hell on Wheels," "Community") will direct.