A Young Jack Bauer ’24’ Prequel Is In Development
’24’, the show that, like Jack Bauer, is seemingly unkillable, could be returning again with Bauer as the leading character, but without Kiefer Sutherland.
According to reports, showrunner Howard Gordon is working with original series co-creators, Joel Surnow and Bob Cochran, to develop a Jack Bauer origin story version of the franchise. The original series starred Sutherland as Bauer, a key member of the Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU), tasked with preventing major terrorist attacks on the United States. The unique selling point of the show was that the events unfolded in real time, with each episode taking a real hour of the characters life.
The original series ran for 8 full seasons, plus a trip to the fictional African country of Sangala in ’24: Redemption’ and a trip to London in ’24: Live Another Day’. Fox then attempted a continuation of the franchise with ’24: Legacy’ starring Corey Hawkins as Eric Carter, but that didn’t really manage to get the numbers they were looking for.
Following on from that, they started looking at the possibility of taking the ’24’ ticking-clock format and applying it to something other than a CTU based terrorism plot. This version would be an anthology format, where the cast and situation change each season. One possibility was a female-led legal drama where a lawyer is battling over 24-hours to save a death row inmate from execution. This iteration, which comes from 24’ exec producers Howard Gordon and Brian Grazer, along with ‘The Killing’ writer/producer Jeremy Doner, is still believed to be in development.
Now, it looks like they are also considering another possibility for the show, which would allow them to bring back Jack Bauer without the need for Kiefer Sutherland. The show is rather physically demanding, and the 51yr old Sutherland has voiced some apprehension at putting his body through that again at this point. This would allow them to cast a younger actor in the role as we see how Bauer ended up working for CTU or maybe his life as a young agent. The plan would be for this to be an ongoing series, not a limited series as was the case for ‘Live Another Day’ and ‘Legacy’.
These sort of prequel shows have become somewhat popular more recently. We’ve had a prequel series to the ‘Taken’ movie franchise, and have a ‘Jack Ryan‘ series coming to Amazon Prime in August. You even have ‘Big Bang’ getting in on the act with ‘Young Sheldon’, so you can see why the producers have come round to the idea.
Whilst none of this is confirmed at the moment, but there does seem to be a desire to have ’24’ return at some point in one way or another. However, Fox will have to do some deals, as ’24’ will fall under Disney’s ownership now the proposed buyout of 21st Century Fox film and television studios has been approved. That would mean “New Fox” would need to license ’24’ back from its new owners. We’ll let you know when we hear more.
