24: LIVE ANOTHER DAY Bosses Evan Katz and Manny Coto Preview the Event Series

Nearly a year after the 24 revival was first announced, we are now just one week away from the debut of 24: LIVE ANOTHER DAY!

To give a little bit of scoop on what’s in store for Jack Bauer’s latest adventure/world-saving mission, 24: LIVE ANOTHER DAY executive producers Evan Katz and Manny Coto hopped on the phone with reporters to tease what’s ahead…

24: LIVE ANOTHER DAY is newbie-friendly:

Whether you were a casual viewer of 24 or never watched a moment of Jack Bauer’s exploits, you can absolutely tune into the premiere of 24: LIVE ANOTHER DAY and get immediately sucked into the world without feeling lost.

“You don’t need to have, certainly, watched 24 before,” Katz said. “We’re very careful to make sure people are brought up to speed.  But we just feel that Jack Bauer’s become part of the cultural iconography out there and this is a good, 12-week – actually 11-week, because the first two are airing in one night – way to have a great roller coaster ride.  If you haven’t seen it, [tune in to] see what all the fuss was about.”

(And if you have any doubts, give the first two hours a chance: episode 1 of LAD does a great job of reintroducing Jack, Chloe, and the other returning players — and there are a whole lot of new characters, too — and episode 2 does a great job of setting up what this season will be dealing with.)

The executive producers are just as excited as fans are to be back in Jack’s world:

For years after 24 ended, rumors swirled that Jack’s story would be revived, with both series star Kiefer Sutherland (Jack) and the show’s creative team often speaking about their desires to revisit the world via a movie. And because the character was never far from the writers’ minds, when it came time to crafting the event series, they had an abundance of possibilities about where to take him.

“I think there was a feeling amongst all of us – even though when season 8 finished, and we were tired and we were kind of ready to move on – I think all of us felt that there was more to this story and that Jack Bauer’s character was not quite ready to shuffle off the stage,” Coto explained. “Of course, there was talk of a movie, so it was generally agreed that there would be more. So when this came around, I think a lot of our thoughts that we had been kind of percolating over the years kind of bubbled forth. I think both of us experienced people coming up to us saying, ‘I wish that show were still on the air; I miss the show; I miss Jack Bauer.’ And I think when the opportunity appeared, we had kind of a reservoir of ideas and thoughts about this character and where he would be now that we were able to draw on.”

“[It’s] particularly exciting because [after the end of the 24 series] he is a fugitive – he was a fugitive – and on the run from his own government,” Coto continued.  “A man who had saved the United States multiple times, that same country has turned its back on him. So that is a fantastic dynamic to start a series and something that we seized on and really energized us.”

Get ready for a whole new Chloe:

Chloe was a fan-favorite during the run of 24 , and while viewers may have seen her evolve during her stint on the series, they have never seen Chloe in quite the shape she’s in when 24: LIVE ANOTHER DAY kicks off.

“When we approached this season, this 12-episode event, we wanted it to be something special, something different, something that will surprise, that fans will like, but will also surprise them,” Coto explained. “And we also had to take into account that four years have passed and the characters have changed radically.”

“[In 24: LIVE ANOTHER DAY there’s] the idea of Chloe O’Brian also being a fugitive, almost as much a fugitive as Jack, having turned her back against the government, as well,” Coto continued. “You take these two characters and you say to yourself there is an event that requires the two of them to work together to come back together and work against the very – and at the same time, try to help the government.  Save Americans, but at the same time fighting the very government that gave them this opportunity.  It’s a great dynamic we’ve decided to explore.”

And, unfortunately for Jack, some of Chloe’s changes are directly related to her opting to help him escape at the end of the series.

“At the end of season eight, the last time we saw them, Jack was sent into exile for crimes he had committed against the state and against the Russians,” Coto reiterated. “But the person who helped Jack go into exile was Chloe O’Brian.  The very last scene of the series is Chloe turning off the satellite so Jack can get away. Well, we have to go with that; we can’t just ignore that.  So the obvious place to go is that Chloe O’Brian herself came under scrutiny, herself was charged, and herself became a fugitive. Jack became a fugitive in his way; he’s a man of action. He went where he went. And Chloe, who is somebody who lives her life behind a keyboard, took arms against the government in her way, and became embittered and suffered her own personal tragedy…things will be revealed as far as what she went through. So it gives the characters a place to go to.  A) It’s surprising, we haven’t seen them this way before.  But [B)] we also get the dramatic reward of seeing them, possibly, come together again. And possibly reawaken their old selves.”

Is Jack still Jack?

Of course, Chloe isn’t the only one who has evolved over time: after four years in exile, Jack is a bit of a changed man, too.

“This is a man who wasn’t just exiled, but something has happened to him over these four years where he has been in exile and he has been running,” Coto teased. “There is a mystery as to what he was up to, there. Did Jack go through a period where he was not a hero? Where he turned, for lack of a better phrase, to turn to the Dark Side? We don’t know. But it’s an interesting mystery. It’s an interesting mystery that’s part of the season…one of the themes that we’re working with is that Jack possibly return to this world?”

But how did he manage to stay off everyone’s radar for all this time, especially since he is a wanted wan?

“You know, living off the grid is something that I think is really interesting to us,” Katz said. “Most of what happened over the last four years at least begins as a mystery, which we unpeel a little bit over the course of the 12 episodes. We just simply assume that someone with Jack Bauer’s tremendous skill set and knowledge – since he was a hunter, he knows how to avoid hunters.”

How will the shorter season work?

The original 24 series was known for having its episodes take place in “real time,” and the event series will stay true to that format…with a twist: the 12 episodes will represent 12 hours of a 24-hour period. (And the show will only skip forward in time between episodes, so it’ll remain in “real time” as the hours unfold.)

“The 12 hours allows us to really condense the story telling,” Coto explained. “In a 24-hour season, we kind of knew how many episodes we had to fill and where we had to go.  And very often, during a season, we’d find ourselves trying to stretch out plots as much as they could go to fill up the vast material. Here, we find ourselves really compressing the action. We’re finding ourselves, very often, a little short of the runway as far as finishing off plots and coming up to the end of the season, and it’s very challenging.  So it is definitely an accelerated form of storytelling that we’re working with this year.”

Could the show continue on beyond this series?

24: LIVE ANOTHER DAY is being billed as an event series, and while the show is intended to be a one-off, the producers won’t entirely shut the door on the potential of continuing on after LAD is done.

“Nothing is impossible, but we are treating this season as a one-time miniseries,” Coto said. “A one-time series event.  It has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and the ending could be the end of 24 for good, if you look at it that way. It depends on how you look at it. I guess my answer is: it’s possible [for more], certainly.  Obviously, it’ll depend on eyeballs, if people tune in. But one thing to keep in mind is we all came back to tell this one last story, one last day in Jack Bauer’s life.  If there’s more beyond, we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”

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24: LIVE ANOTHER DAY kicks off Monday, May 5th at 8 PM on Fox.

Related:

24: LIVE ANOTHER DAY Two-Hour Premiere Photos
24: LIVE ANOTHER DAY Gets a Movie Trailer-Style Teaser
24: LIVE ANOTHER DAY: Check Out the New Trailer and Key Art!

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