’24’ Possibly Returning to Fox

It’s looking like 24 might join the ever-growing dossier of TV shows getting a revival. Rumors of the revival first started last week at the Television Critics’ Association winter tour when Fox Entertainment President Michael Thorn teased it as a possibility. Now, in an interview Deadline, the former executive producer and showrunner Howard Gordon that Fox “certainly wants to do it, and we’re talking.”

“When I say talking, what it will be,” Gordon quickly clarified. “The big headline being it has to be worth doing. We can’t do it to just do it. We want to find the right story. Todd Harthan who is running The Resident is working on it. I’m a friend of the court. I hope that there will be some traction this spring, just deciding what it might be.”

Thorn echoed these sentiments last week at TCA, saying that “if there is a way to do another 24, we would be thrilled to do it.”

The original 24 was created by Joel Surnow and Robert Cochran, which premiered on Fox back in November of 2001. It starred Kiefer Sutherland as anti-terror agent Jack Bauer, and featured the innovative story technique that each of the season’s 24 episodes would chronicle one hour in Bauer’s day — hence the title.

It ran for eight seasons before its finale in 2010. Four years later, a ninth season was released, titled 24: Live Another Day. A spinoff featuring all-new characters, 24: Legacy, kicked off in early 2017, though it was canceled that same year.

In 2018, there was talk of a prequel series, which would’ve seen Sutherland return to the role of Jack Bauer. However, based on his remarks to the BBC back in 2015, it didn’t seem like it was a character he was interested in reprising.

“It’s one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever been given as an actor, but it’s moving on without me, I want to do other things,” he said at the time. “My experience on 24 was unbelievable, but the main benefit was that it was nice to do something that people actually watched and that they enjoyed.”

At the time, Sutherland said doing the show was “refreshing” and praised that it was “accessible to a lot of people and to know they enjoyed it was so rewarding for me,” adding that he planned “to do more of it and look for projects where I can repeat my experience.”

Sutherland will next star in a modern-day reimagining of the classic action series The Fugitive.