Get ready to meet your new Jack Bauer!
The iconic 24 character, who was brought to life for over eight seasons (and one rebooted mini-series season) by Kiefer Sutherland, won’t be back for Fox’s new rebooted spinoff series, titled 24: Legacy. The network has decided to move forward with a story surrounding a new main character, and that starring role has just been handed to Corey Hawkins.
The Straight Outta Compton and The Walking Dead star has landed the role of Eric Carter, a strong and smart former Army Ranger who finds himself pulled back into action as his past comes calling for him in the present. He will eventually turn to CTU for help in saving his life and stopping what potentially could be one of the largest-scale terror attacks on American soil.
24: Legacy, which has only netted a pilot order so far by Fox, will be 12 episodes if ordered to series, just like last year’s critically-acclaimed mini-series reboot 24: Live Another Day. Earlier this month, Fox bosses Dana Walden and Gary Newman announced that the new spin-off would feature an all-new cast of characters, including an African-American lead to take on the Jack Bauer-like lead role. However, 24: Legacy will still retain the original DNA of the series with the real-time, fast-paced format with split screens and complex interweaving storylines, with each episode representing one hour of a single day. The pilot will film this winter.
“We wanted [the star] to be as different from Jack Bauer as possible, whether that’s an African-American or a Latino actor,” Walden said.
“As envisioned, the lead character would be diverse, so that [was] our first effort in casting,” Newman added. “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.”
“There’s also a female co-lead who is a former head of CTU,” Walden added. “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.”
24: Legacy will honor prior CTU agents, but it won’t feature any returning characters. Sutherland might return behind the camera to executive produce with the old 24 creative team of Howard Gordon, Manny Coto and Evan Katz, but he won’t reprise his iconic role of Jack Bauer onscreen. He’s passing the reins of saving the day from terrorists to Hawkins.
“I have said from the beginning that the real star of 24 is the idea, and I mean that wholeheartedly,” Sutherland said of the new spinoff. “I have every faith they’ll do something cool and clever.”
The Emmy Award-winning drama franchise was most recently revived as 24: Live Another Day, a 12-episode event series that aired back in summer of 2014. It reunited the original series stars Sutherland, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Kim Raver and William Devane. 24 originally aired from 2001-2010 and was nominated for a total of 73 Emmy Awards, winning for Outstanding Drama Series in 2006.
What do you think of 24‘s new leading man?
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Images: Fox, Getty Images
