Production to Halt on 24 for 18 Days

Here is a bit of interesting news regarding one of the most action-packed series on television.

According to EW.com, production on the FOX series 24 will halt on September 15th after they finish filming episode 18. The break will last 18 days and resume on October 9th. The reason is to give the writing staff time to “re-shape” the final episodes.

Egh, I’m not sure I like the sound of that. Of course, it’s great that they realized the way things were going wasn’t working, but it worries me overall as to the quality of the seventh season.

“[production will be halted] while the writers reshape the upcoming season’s creative direction — specifically the transition leading to the end game. “We had a couple of scripts that we weren’t happy with,” 24 exec producer Howard Gordon tells EW.com. “We just couldn’t get this direction to work, and we found another one that we liked better, so we wound up retooling it.”

As the article says, any time a show shuts down production is bad sign. But Gordon assures fans that the show is way ahead of schedule and this stoppage wont affect any air dates.

Of course, when you think that they already will have eighteen episodes in the can after the 15th, I see no reason to worry either.

“The only, only, only concern at all is getting it right,” Howard says. “Our feeling was this: We’re so happy with what we’ve done so far, and to the extent that we had that luxury [of time], we said, ‘Why not make it as good as we could?’

Let’s hope this re-writing of the final six hours, coupled with the first 18, will exeed the quality of last year.

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8 Responses to “Production to Halt on 24 for 18 Days”

  1. I'm not overly worried. Haven't you ever been writing something and about halfway through it thought, “man, it would have been really cool if I had done this!”? I'm cool with it if they just got a better idea and thought the show would be better by retooling the episodes. As long as it works.

  2. Is it on yet?

  3. Maybe they decided against writing Kim back in to the end of the season. If that's the case, I'm on board. Take your time, and get it right!

  4. LOL - Amen.

  5. The story line was Bauer stuck in a county jail for drunk driving.

  6. That story line ended too quickly because NO JAIL can hold Jack!

  7. 18 episodes in and they are reshaping. A little concerned over the first 18 episodes now. They have been doing some really dumb things that past couple of seasons. They need to hire Mike to tell them when they write something or someone back in that is stupid. Then he can correct it for all of us.

  8. I like that idea…I might even make decent money for that kind of job.

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