Black Summer is an American horror drama television series created by Karl Schaefer and John Hyams.

Jaime King stars in the lead role as Rose, a mother who is separated from her daughter during the earliest and deadliest days of a zombie apocalypse.

[3] Six weeks after the start of the zombie apocalypse, Rose (Jaime King) is separated from her daughter, Anna, and she embarks on a harrowing journey to find her.

Thrust alongside a small group of refugees in North America, she must brave a hostile new world and make brutal decisions during the most deadly summer of the apocalypse.

On July 19, 2018, it was reported that Netflix had given an 8-episode, straight-to-series order for a "spin-off" prequel series to Syfy's Z Nation, titled Black Summer.

[4] On July 29, King announced via her Instagram account that Justin Chu Cary would portray a character named Spears.

He said that the horror series is not intended to be the funny version of The Walking Dead that Z Nation is, but would instead be more of an "old-school" take on zombie lore.

[15][8] The series continued production in the smaller communities of Irricana, Beiseker and Cochrane before returning to Calgary in mid-to-late September.

[14] Z Nation actor DJ Qualls revealed at San Diego Comic-Con that the Syfy series takes place "quite a long time" after the events of Black Summer, making him feel that the cast is "too old" for a crossover to work.

The website's critical consensus reads, "Black Summer has enough undead carnage and a sinewy pace to please zombie fans, but the series suffers from scant characterization and doesn't add much storytelling meat to the genre's gnawed-on bone.