Screen Rant’s resident TV expert Bruce Simmons has been keeping our readers updated on ABC’s forthcoming new series Flash Foward, which is being written/directed by David S. Goyer (Batman Begins), produced by Marc Guggenheim (co-writer of The Green Lantern) and executive produced by Brannon Braga (Star Trek Voyager, Enterprise, 24).
FlashForward had a panel at the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con International, where the pilot episode was screened. Afterwards, the cast and show creators let us know what we can expect from the upcoming season, what the creative path of the show has been, and they even debuted a previously unannounced cast member who had the crowd on their feet and cheering.
(And be sure to read to the end for quotes on Batman 3, The Green Lantern, and upcoming Star Trek projects.)
Flash Forward is about a moment in time when the entire population of Earth blacks out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds and during that short span of time, they get a glimpse into their future 6 months from that moment.
Though the show is based on the book of the same name by Robert J. Sawyer, and if you’ve read the book, you might be thinking you know where the story is headed. You may want to rethink your assumptions.
And Brucey-B was right on the money: Goyer and Co. are definitely taking a different direction with this show (though Sawyer still acts as a consultant of sorts). One big difference: in Sawyer’s book, the people waking up from “the black out” event see visions of their future some two decades down the line. For the purposes of Tv drama, Goyer and Co. have scaled the visions back to 6 months in the future, April 29th, when SOMETHING big is supposed to go down. Ironically enough, April 29, 2010 will also be the air date of one of the 1st season’s major episodes.
But before we get into all these fine details – how was the show itself?
We only got to see 2/3 of the pilot episode, but the show is definitely something to be excited about for the fall season. It’s kind of like a Lost/24 mashup – which is not surprising since there of the show’s three creators one is a die hard Lost fan (Goyer) and another is a producer on 24.
The pilot episode (as much as we saw) introduced us to FBI Agent Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes from Shakespeare In Love), a loving father and husband. On the day of “the black out” Agent Benford and his partner Agent Witten (John Cho) are in hot pursuit of suspected terrorists; when they wake from the black out, Benford’s “Flash Forward” is of a future where he has been investigating the cause of the worldwide black out, and is seemingly on the verge of a major discovery when he is ambushed by men with big guns. His partner, Witten, on the other hand, sees nothing in his future at all. Yikes.
Most of the pilot we see were epic disaster scenes of the black out event. And for a Tv show, I gotta say, the scale of the destruction and the special f/x involved were all pretty impressive.
As was the cast for the show. You have Fiennes and Cho (both good guys); Courtney B. Vance of Law & Order fame; and Sonya Walger (Penny from Lost) as Benford’s wife, Olivia. Everybody handled their roles well and there was no discnerable slouch in the cast.
Speaking of the cast, I promised you a previously unannounced addition: Lost’s Dominic Monaghan! When “Charlie” himself was brought out at the very end of the panel the crowd went NUTS. Unfortunately with the time running short, all Monaghan was able to reveal was that his character is named “Simon” and that he is a “game-changing character.” Goyer added that Monaghan playing Simon was planned from the beginning.
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