
英國的巨石陣,Kiefer也當起觀光客了。
Fox has announced plans to end the groundbreaking series when its eighth season concludes with a two-hour finale May 24; production wraps on April 9. The news leaves star Kiefer Sutherland "really nostalgic and really sad" at the end of what has been the highlight of his career. "Before this show, I wasn't working a whole lot."
As with many long-in-the-tooth series, high costs and declining ratings are to blame. But the real-time conceit of the series, which consists of 24 episodes that add up to a single very bad day for Sutherland's action hero, Jack Bauer, took an exceptional toll on writers.
"I know they get incredibly burnt and bent," Sutherland says. "Ultimately, we felt we had a much better opportunity of doing something special by doing a film ... than going back to another season and doing 24 more episodes. The more you do it, the more you paint yourself into a corner, and I think, 'How many times have I played the same moment over and over?' "
Viewers may have felt that way last week, when Counter Terrorist Unit analyst Dana Walsh (Katee Sackhoff) was revealed as the latest in a long line of "moles" subverting CTU's mission to save the world. Executive producer Howard Gordon urges viewers to "hold on before you throw your shoes at the TV set" and see how that story line concludes.
The decision to end the show was made earlier this month. "We all felt it was right to end it," Gordon says. "We've really had what feels like our last day. The real-time aspect was one of the propulsive devices, but it was very restrictive, even with the absurdities, the license we allowed ourselves."
The series, which premiered in 2001, played an important role in the rebuilding of the Fox network, and was a pioneering drama in its early seasons, even though initially low ratings left its future uncertain. But critics have seemed to tire of repetitive plots in recent seasons, ratings have faded, and the network wants to build new shows in the key Monday time slot behind hit medical drama House.
Although Gordon's contract to oversee 24 expires this year, studio 20th Century Fox tried to pitch the show to NBC when Fox bailed. Gordon calls that plan "a challenge," and NBC wasn't interested.
So this season's final hours (10 remain after tonight) provide a more "definitive" ending than others. "The show goes to a place that's far more complex and represents a bigger risk than we've ever taken," Gordon says. Events demonstrate "this is not something (Bauer) can easily recover from. The idea of a happy ending is just too dishonest for this character in his eighth terrible day."
Though the ending was not "retrofitted" to pave the way for a feature film, "they would be able to move together seamlessly," Sutherland says. A first draft of the script has been written by Billy Ray (State of Play) and would take place in a single day, though it hasn't yet been OK'd. Avoiding the real-time format will allow Bauer to travel across Europe.
The show's legacy includes not only that format but also its role in politics as justification — or rebuke — for the use of torture in apprehending and interrogating its many, many bad guys, especially after the incidents at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Sutherland dismisses the notion that 24 ever took sides.
"Do Howard and I believe that torturing suspected criminals is right? Absolutely not," he says. "Does it make for great drama? Of course. That's what I do. I wasn't running for office."
"24's" clock has officially been stopped, but the franchise is far from over.
Not only is a movie in the works, with Kiefer Sutherland reprising his role as the federal agent who's had a few rough days. But 20th Century Fox TV also hasn't quite shut the door on finding a way to keep the "24" world active, perhaps through a spinoff of sorts at another net.
For now, though, it's all over. The cast and crew of "24" were given the official word on Friday: This season will be the show's last.
News, finally confirmed by Fox, had been expected -- Variety reported earlier this month that the network was ready to call it a day (Daily Variety, March 9). Sutherland, exec producer Howard Gordon and the studio were also leaning toward ending the show's run as well.
"For us, creatively, it seemed like the right time to do it," Sutherland told Variety. "It's very bittersweet. '24' was the greatest learning experience of my career so far. And on a personal level, working with this cast and crew and writers, these will be friends of mine for the rest of my life."
Fox had planned to inform the show's cast and crew earlier this month that it wouldn't pick up a ninth season. But first, sister studio 20th Century Fox TV asked Sutherland, Gordon and the rest of the show's producers to think long and hard about whether they had a strong desire to pursue a season nine.
At the same time, 20th took calls from parties toying with the idea of acquiring the show -- including NBC and DirecTV, which was rumored to be considering a production model in the vein of "Friday Night Lights."
"They're still talking," said Gordon, whose deal with 20th technically would keep him on "24" for another year. (Sutherland's pact is up.) "But they're certainly in the end stages of those conversations."
Ultimately, Sutherland, Gordon and company felt that they had accomplished what they wanted to with the show, and were ready to wrap things up.
"Kiefer and me and the writers had (a decision to make)," Gordon said. "What's the creative? What do we do? Is there any more story left to be told in this 24-hour format? We turned over every stone, and really determined that the story has come to an end in this 24-hour format."
Now that the decision has been made, "24" is on course to end its run with a two-hour finale on Monday, May 24 (the night after ABC ends its run of another long-running 2000s drama, "Lost.") Fox has 11 more hours left of the show to go.
Both Sutherland and Gordon said they're bullish now on moving Jack Bauer to the big screen, and compressing a 24-hour day -- yes, the entire movie's action will still take place in just one day -- over the course of just two hours.
"The opportunity to make a movie and do a two-hour representation was something appealing to he and I both," Sutherland said.
As Variety reported in February, scribe Billy Ray ("State of Play") is busy writing a screenplay; Gordon will produce.
"For the first time, we'll be able to go from England to Russia, or China to Japan, depending on where they choose to set it," Sutherland said. "Before on the TV show, the crisis had to come to us. The best we could do it was get across town... It alleviates a huge hurdle that real-time writing presented."
As for the final episodes of "24," Fox's marketing team will now be able to start touting the show's finale -- and will likely get a nice Monday night ratings bump as the show comes to a close.
Gordon finished up the final episode a few weeks ago -- calling it a "very emotional moment" when he hit "send" -- and that series ender is now in the process of being shot.
"There are risks starting around episode 17, and some real challenging things Kiefer was willing to go for," Gordon said.
The exec producer said the series will end on a tremendous, and suitable note that signifies that this isn't just another season ender. But here's a hint: Jack neither walks off whistling into the sunset, nor winds up in a body bag.
"We tried everything on for size, from Jack's demise to a happy ending," he said. "Both of those were unsatisfying for their own reasons."
Fox planned to make the official announcement on Monday, but longtime "24" director Jon Cassar informed his Twitter followers that the crew was given the firm word of "24's" wrap.
"News from the '24' set," Cassar wrote (cleaned up from his original text). "The crew has been told that '24' has come to an end. There will be no season 9. It's been a great run, thanks all for watching."
As Variety wrote on March 9, "24" helped usher in Fox's ratings surge in the 2000s, as the franchise -- along with "American Idol" and "House," among other series -- led the network's adults 18-49 ratings crown.
But the cost of producing "24" has continued to increase (show's license fee hovers in the mid-seven figure range, as the network is now covering the aging show's entire cost), while ratings have dipped.
"24" was created by Robert Cochran and Joel Surnow, while exec producer Gordon runs the show through his Teakwood Lane Prods. banner. Brian Grazer's Imagine Entertainment produces the show along with 20th Century Fox TV.
Sutherland has starred throughout all eight seasons as Jack Bauer, a federal agent and member of the Los Angeles Counter Terrorist Unit (and who has saved the world several times over). "24" made noise for its real time format, in which all 24 episodes take place as consecutive hours in the same day.
"Bob and Joel created a revolutionary format," Gordon said. "They executed it for the first half of the series as my partners and friends, and those were some of the most remarkable years I had creatively."
Although it was developed before the terrorist attacks of 9/11, "24" debuted several months afterward -- and in many ways began to mirror the changed world, given the real-life fears over terrorism and debates over torture methods. The show's depiction of an African-American president was also seen as a ground-breaking precursor to the 2008 election of Barack Obama.
"('24') came at a time when our world changed and our perception of our safety and vulnerability changed," Gordon said. Gordon noted that the show had its supporters and detractors on both sides of the political aisles. Sutherland, meanwhile, said he was less concerned about the show's place in popular culture and more than it just be remembered as a strong piece of work.
"My concern as an actor and as a producer was that the stories were interesting, the drama was going to put you on the edge of your seat and that we would maintain the quality," he said. "I can't help someone politicizing something. It was done by the right and the left... the only thing I can say is, it's a TV show."
"24" won both the Emmy and the Golden Globe awards for outstanding drama, while Sutherland has scored both an Emmy and a Globe for drama actor. "24" has also received Emmy Awards for writing and directing; last year, Cherry Jones won an Emmy for supporting actress in a drama.
This season's edition of "24," which takes place in New York, stars Sutherland, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Cherry Jones, Anil Kapoor, Annie Wersching, Katee Sackhoff, Mykelti Williamson, Freddie Prinze Jr., Chris Diamantopoulos and John Boyd.
Howard Gordon, Evan Katz, David Fury, Manny Coto, Brannon Braga, Brad Turner, Alex Gansa, Kiefer Sutherland and Brian Grazer are executive producers.
Next up for Gordon, he's partnering with Alex Gansa and Gideon Raff to adapt Raff's Israeli drama "Prisoners of War" for U.S. audiences, through 20th.
Sutherland, meanwhile, said he'd be willing to try another TV series.
"There's amazing TV out there," he said. "And drama and kind of human interaction I was interested in as an actor is being done there."If any one show has represented the post-9/11 era on television, it is “24,” the Fox drama that has offered counterterrorism as entertainment for nine years.
For Fox, the show’s trademark clock is about to stop ticking. Nearly a decade after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that so heavily influenced people’s perceptions of the show, Fox is planning to cancel it. The current season, its eighth, will be its last.
In an interview early this month, the Fox network’s entertainment president, Kevin Reilly, said, “It’s a hard decision for all involved.”
“24” first captured America’s attention in late 2001. The first season, which involved the explosion of a passenger plane and an assassination attempt on the president, entered production well before the 9/11 attacks, but had its premiere eight weeks afterward. At the time, a review in The New York Times noted the “deadly convergence between real life and Hollywood fantasy.”
After this season’s finale in May, “24” will live on, possibly as a feature film, and surely in classrooms and in textbooks. The series enlivened the country’s political discourse in a way few others have, partly because it brought to life the ticking time-bomb threat that haunted the Cheney faction of the American government in the years after 9/11.
Walter Gary Sharp, an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University who taught the course “The Law of 24” in 2007-8, said “24” acted as “a tool to foster public debate to help the public and the government of all nations to consider the proper limits on democracies in their efforts to combat terrorism.”
The character of Bauer, a secret agent played by Kiefer Sutherland, became a stand-in for a stop-at-nothing approach to counterterrorism, and his tactics were evoked by Bush administration officials, Republican presidential candidates and even a justice of the Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia.
John Yoo, who helped shape the Bush administration’s interrogation techniques as a Justice Department lawyer, asked in a 2006 book, “What if, as the popular Fox television program ‘24’ recently portrayed, a high-level terrorist leader is caught who knows the location of a nuclear weapon in an American city. Should it be illegal for the president to use harsh interrogation short of torture to elicit this information?”
But for the same reasons the show found fans in Bush-era Washington, it has also faced severe scrutiny for its depictions of torture.
“On some level ‘24’ is just a big ole’ ad for torture,” David Danzig, a deputy program director of Human Rights First, a nonprofit group, wrote in an e-mail message. “Those of us who watch the show a lot — and there are tens of millions of us who do — know exactly what is going to happen as soon as Bauer starts to beat a suspect up. He is going to talk.”
The torture sequences were misleading, Mr. Danzig said, because they contributed to a “pervasive myth” that torture was effective. He recalled that Gary Solis, the former director of West Point’s law of war program, once called “24” “one of the biggest problems” in his classroom.
In an e-mail message earlier this month, Mr. Solis wrote that when he would preach battlefield restraint in class, a “not infrequent cadet response” would be something to the effect of “Yeah? Well, did you see Jack Bauer last night? He shot a prisoner right in the knee, and that dude talked.”
The cadets knew right from wrong, and the comments were usually made with a grin, Mr. Solis said. Still, “24” presented a conundrum for the law of war professors, some of whom personally enjoyed the show but wished the torture scenes could be toned down if not eliminated altogether.
Similarly, other officials have said that “24” and other shows influenced the behavior of interrogators at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere. Diane Beaver, a military lawyer at Guantánamo, told a fellow lawyer that Mr. Bauer “gave people lots of ideas,” according to Jane Mayer’s 2008 book, “The Dark Side.”
Mr. Danzig’s group, Human Rights First, met with the “24” producers in 2006 and introduced them to real-life interrogators in 2009. He noted that the series did evolve over time — Mr. Bauer stood trial in Season 7 for his torturous actions — and said that “there is now a little more sensitivity toward the portrayal of torture.”
Still, he added, “the take-home message” has not changed.
While speaking to television writers in January, Mr. Sutherland said of the torture sequences: “It’s a television show. We’re not telling you to try this at home.”
He also refuted claims of a political slant to “24.” “One of the things that I was always so unbelievably proud of our show is that you could have it being discussed by former President Bill Clinton and Rush Limbaugh at the same time, both using it and citing it to justify their points of view,” he said. “That, to me, was incredibly balanced.”
For years, “24” regularly drew 10 million to 14 million viewers, and it became a bona fide hit on DVD, partly thanks to its groundbreaking real-time format. As the first serious serialized show of the decade, “24” reaffirmed that viewers would follow a complex plot for an entire season, setting the stage for dramas like “Lost.”
Much of the credit can be given to Mr. Bauer’s character, the archetypal hero of the counterterrorism age.
“Everyone loves a man of action, someone larger than life, like John Wayne, a hero that saves the day regardless of the personal sacrifice,” said Mr. Sharp, the law professor, “and Jack Bauer saves the day every season, if not every episode.”
Like many mature series, though, “24” has had an erosion in its ratings. So far this season it has averaged 11.5 million viewers. Its impending cancellation, which was first reported in early March by television trade publications, will be announced in the coming days, according to a person associated with the show who requested anonymity because Fox and its studio were declining to comment. Although NBC reportedly contemplated picking up the show, it has opted not to.
A “24” movie script is in development, although a film is not guaranteed. Mr. Sutherland said in a recent interview that the movie would be a “two-hour representation of a 24-hour day.” For Jack Bauer, there is always a ticking time bomb to defuse.
But those days ago and week+ ago reports be damned. It’s Friday March 12, and today that whole story is Michael Ausiello’s EXCLUSIVE. What a douche nozzle he can be.
It sure seems to me that there’s no new news here. Fox was already shopping it to NBC and NBC was already at least interested enough to discuss it. I remain doubtful that Fox will strike a deal with NBC. The reason Fox isn’t interested in it itself is because of increasing costs and diminishing ratings. NBC needs to find its own hits rather than riding someone else’s long-in-tooth retreads into the ground.
However, it’s possible Fox (the studio) could cut NBC a sweetheart of a deal that changes my thinking. One additional reason Fox (the broadcast network) wasn’t interested is it needs that slot after House to try to launch a new series (I think it was Adalian who reported that — it might have been Schneider or Hibberd, too, but it definitely wasn’t Ausiello).
That makes some sense, and 24 was still a relatively strong DVD seller last season. I don’t see Fox offering it to NBC for dimes on the dollar, but I could see Fox at least discounting it a bit hoping to make it back up in DVD, syndication and any international licensing.
"24’s” time is almost up.
20th Century Fox TV and Fox appear ready to end the long-running hit after this season, the show’s eighth.
Studio and network execs declined comment -- but it’s believed that the final decision will be made in the next day or two. Move is not a huge surprise, but still reps the end of an era for Fox.
“24” helped usher in Fox’s ratings surge in the 2000s, as the franchise -- along with “American Idol” and “House,” among other series -- led the network’s adults 18-49 ratings crown.
But the cost of producing “24” has continued to increase, while ratings have dipped. A one-time critical darling, “24” has also received its share of knocks from reviewers this season.
The studio is said to be considering shopping “24” to other nets -- but given the thriller’s age and price tag, it’s believed that the interest from other outlets will be limited.
But even as bell tolls for “24,” the franchise is far from over. Sutherland and the “24” team have been keen on turning the show into a movie property, and have made major strides in recent months toward making that long-term goal a reality.
Twentieth Century Fox’s film side recently hired scribe Billy Ray (“State of Play,” “Flightplan”) to pen the script for the feature version. (Daily Variety, Feb. 8.)
Ray’s pitch, which takes Jack Bauer to Europe, was a hit with Fox execs and producers of the high-concept television series.
Script is said to have come through “24” star Sutherland, who’s also an exec producer on the series -- and is said to be eager to turn the long-running TV skein into a movie franchise.
Such a move into the features world was considered impossible while production continued on the TV series -- given that “24” takes much of the year to produce, given its feature-like shooting schedule. But with “24” expected to end its run, the ability to focus on a movie could now finally be in sight.
“24” was created by Robert Cochran and Joel Surnow, while exec producer Howard Gordon runs the show through his Real Time Prods. banner.
Brian Grazer’s Imagine Entertainment produces the show along with 20th Century Fox TV.
Sutherland has starred throughout all eight seasons as Jack Bauer, a federal agent and member of the Los Angeles Counter Terrorist Unit (and who has saved the world several times over). “24” made noise for its real time format, in which all 24 episodes take place as consecutive hours in the same day.
Although it was developed before the terrorist attacks of 9/11, “24” debuted several months afterward -- and in many ways began to mirror the changed world, given the real-life fears over terrorism and debates over torture methods. The show’s depiction of an African-American president was also seen as a ground-breaking precursor to the 2008 election of Barack Obama.
Show has also won both the Emmy and the Golden Globe awards for outstanding drama, while Sutherland has scored both an Emmy and a Globe for drama actor. “24” has also received Emmy Awards for writing and directing; last year, Cherry Jones won an Emmy for supporting actress in a drama.
This season’s edition of “24,” which takes place in New York, stars Sutherland, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Cherry Jones, Anil Kapoor, Annie Wersching, Katee Sackhoff, Mykelti Williamson, Freddie Prinze Jr., Chris Diamantopoulos and John Boyd.
Howard Gordon, Evan Katz, David Fury, Manny Coto, Brannon Braga, Brad Turner, Alex Gansa, Kiefer Sutherland and Brian Grazer are executive producers.
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