Z Nation is officially expanding its borders.

The zombie horror/dramedy, which is slated to return to SYFY for its fifth season this year, is getting a spin-off exclusively for Netflix.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, an eight-episode spin-off of Z Nation, titled Black Summer, was ordered direct-to-series by the streaming giant. The show will star Jaime King (My Bloody Valentine, Sin City) as a mother who's been separated from her daughter, and will stop at nothing to find her during one of the deadliest summers in the land of the undead.

Black Summer sounds like its taking a cue from its parent series, which has a road-trip element, as a group of everyday people helping to escort the one person who's immune to the virus travel cross-country. Z Nation was renewed for a fifth season by SYFY at the end of last year.

Z Nation creator Karl Schaefer and producer John Hyams will also serve as showrunners for the spinoff. At today's Comic-Con panel, Schaefer noted that "Black Summer is before the apocalypse got weird and was just scary."

He also said the spin-off is not going to be episodic, but will instead be an eight-hour chunk to work through. And that it's not intended to be the funny version of The Walking Dead that Z Nation is, but instead an old-school, scary, zombie thing.

Jaime King in Escape Plan 2: Hades (Credit: EFO Films)

It's not clear how, or if, Black Summer will tie into Z Nation's Season 4 finale, which revealed the existence of a military program called Black Rainbow. The "fourth strike" program (when three strikes aren't enough) used drones to disperse flesh-eating bacteria in the atmosphere, wiping out both zombies and the living alike.

While Netflix has made a habit of continuing series canceled by other networks, Black Summer also continues their trend of creating off-shoots from shows that still air on other networks. Similarly, the streaming giant is in the process of creating The Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina, a spin-off of The CW's Archie Comics-inspired Riverdale.

Are you down with seeing the world of Z Nation expanded? Let us know in the comments.

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