Have we seen the last of Jack Bauer and the Counter Terrorist Unit? During a conference call with reporters, including TVWise, Fox Co-Chairman and CEO Gary Newman revealed that plans were afoot for further iterations of 24, something the network first hinted at back in January at the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour.
24 ran for eight seasons on Fox between 2001 and 2010, before subsequently returning for limited event series Live Another Day last Summer. The series originally starred Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer, who was frequently called upon to avert a terrorist attack across a 24 hour window.
Fox first announced in January that they were considering further seasons of the show without Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer. That announcement came not too long after 20th Century Fox began considering a new 24 feature film. Fox execs have been quiet on which character might replace Bauer, but last year there was talk of Yvonne Strahovski’s Kate Morgan as the new centre of future 24 seasons.
“We have been developing another version of 24, but it’s still fairly early in the development process”, Newman revealed on the call. “So there just would be nothing that we could tell you at this time other than we are working on something.”
Elsewhere, fellow Fox Co-Chairman and CEO Dana Walden spoke about the upcoming six episode X-Files revival, which is set to star Gillian Anderson, David Duchovny and Mitch Pileggi. (It was just announced that the event series will launch with a two-night event on January 24th and 25th, before moving to its regular Monday night 8pm time-slot the following week.)
“We’re very excited about this. We think it will be a huge reward for fans of this legendary show”, said Walden. “It’s taken us a very long time to get these three back together. They actually go into production in June and we’re going to use the NFC Championship game to launch this event.”
“We thought a lot about how to ‘eventize’ bringing this show back, from a scheduling perspective”, she added. “We’ve got a lot going on mid-season on our schedule and it felt like the best way to capitalise on all the opportunities was to give The X-Files – something the fans have literally been clamouring for for a decade – giving it the best maximum exposure in that post NFC Game time-period and then starting the next day with the first of the next five episodes.”
“Have you ever met Chris Carter?”, Walden joked in response to a question on just how much series creator and executive producer Chris Carter had shared with Fox execs regarding story details. “Because he doesn’t tell us A LOT. I think there will be a combination. I think you will see a combination of episodes if you were a loyal fan and became familiar with the process of mixing standalones and the deeper mythology episodes. I think everyone will be happy with what he’s got planned.”