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Fox Orders ’24: Legacy’ Without Jack Bauer — See Keifer Sutherland’s Reaction To The News

By Ernie Howell
Published on: 13:50 PST, Jan 22, 2016

The Fox Network has ordered a pilot for a 24 reboot, but former 24 star Keifer Sutherland will not be a part of it. Instead, the new 24 pilot will have a more racially diverse cast. Eager to share its news, Fox posted the exciting prospect of the pilot of a 24 reboot on its Twitter page.

Fox included a link to a webpage that detailed the success of the original 24 TV series and a teaser about the new pilot.

“The clock keeps ticking as Fox orders 24: Legacy, the pilot for a new installment of ground breaking and award winning action drama series.”

According to Yahoo! News, the new pilot series for Fox, entitled 24: Legacy and will be created by Howard Gordon, Manny Coto, and Evan Katz, all whom worked on the original 24 series. Brian Grazer is also attached to executive produce and while Kiefer Sutherland will not reprise his role as Jack Bauer, he will be a producer on the new show.

Keifer Sutherland was quick to share his feelings on 24: Legacy. While Keifer Sutherland wants to see some closure for his character, Jack Bauer, seeing 24 return to the small screen is still an exciting concept for him.

“I have said from the beginning that the real star of 24 is the idea, and I mean that wholeheartedly…Whether we end up working together on it or not, I’ll be one of the first people who can’t wait to see it. I have every faith they’ll do something cool and clever.”

The pilot for 24: Legacy will follow the same format of the original 24, but this time will be centered around the return of a military hero who returns to the U.S. Along with his arrival comes a host of trouble which forces him to ask CTU for help. In addition to this new character’s plot is also the fact that a large scale terror attack is in the works.

The central character in the 24: Legacy pilot is named Eric Carter and is so far being conceived as African-American. The role is currently being auditioned for. In an interview reported by Entertainment Weekly, Fox CEO Dana Walden elaborated on how this character was created.

“We wanted [the star] to be as different from Jack Bauer as possible, whether that’s an African-American or a Latino actor.”

Fellow Fox executive Gary Newman added to these sentiments.

“As envisioned, the lead character would be diverse, so that will be our first effort in casting. As always, we’re going to cast the best actor we can find for the role. As you can imagine, bringing 24 back, we want to really try to create some distinction and make this feel different than Jack Bauer’s 24, so having a diverse actor in that lead role I think would be helpful in doing that.”

A second main character has been envisioned as a woman who used to head CTU. Walden added key details about what role she will play in the series.

“There’s also a female co-lead who is a former head of CTU. It doesn’t feel like it is fully replicating the original in terms of how much Jack Bauer carried by himself, but it’s a very prominently-featured lead.”

A further roster of characters has not been announced yet but there is speculation that some familiar faces from the original 24 series could be found in the new pilot.

While the 24: Legacy pilot will introduce new characters, its format will still adhere to the original 24 series. Unlike 2014’s 24: Live Another Day, which was a limited run follow-up that featured Kiefer Sutherland in 12 episodes, 24: Legacy will definitely have 24 episodes. This was confirmed by Walden.

“That’s something we discussed for years, ‘It’s 24 — it has to be 24 episodes.’ I don’t think any of us believe that a 24-episode arc in this day and age is the way to go.”

The pace, too, of the pilot for 24: Legacy will be reminiscent of the original series, Newman promises.

“The pilot will feature an all-new cast of characters and retain the real-time, pulse-pounding, fast-paced format with split screens and complex interweaving storylines, with each episode representing one hour of an eventful day.”

The 24 reboot for Fox follows in the same vein of other shows viewers can expect to see in 2016. Another reboot – Fuller House – has fans of the Netflix streaming service excited, and Showtime is planning to revive Twin Peaks this year.

While Fox is still working on the pilot for 24: Legacy, if it is picked up the show will most likely begin airing in September, 2016. There is hope that a new update will do as well as the original 24 which lasted for eight seasons. The TV show 24 hit its peak in 2005 when it won five Emmy awards including Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama for Kiefer Sutherland.

[Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images]

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