SOURCE: SCIFIWIREDavid Goyer, co-creator of ABC's buzzworthy sci-fi series FlashForward, wants to let you know that everything you know is wrong.
That is, everything you think you know about his new series, which he is executive-producing with Brannon Braga and Marc Guggenheim, based on the book by Robert J. Sawyer. Goyer spoke with us on the show's set on the Disney studios lot in Burbank, Calif, on Monday, along with stars Joseph Fiennes, Dominic Monaghan, Jack Davenport and others.
In the series, everyone in the world blacks out for 2 minutes 17 seconds, during which time each person has a glimpse of the future and their lives on a specific date: April 29, 2010. The show's characters will spend the bulk of the first season figuring out what will come true and whether they can alter the predictions.
Here's Goyer's and the other's list of things FlashForward is and a few things it isn't.
FlashForward debuts Sept. 24 and will air Thursdays at 8 p.m.
1) It's not Lost 2. This is the biggest bugaboo the producers have to deal with, though they themselves have said they're flattered by the comparison.
"I think, really, aside from the fact that it's big and cinematic and there are a lot of characters, I think as soon as people see the episodes the comparisons will stop," Goyer says. "Although I love Lost."
Former Lost cast member Monaghan, who plays Simon in FlashForward, agrees. "Look, it's inevitable that when you do a show that's on the same network with the same kinds of aspirations, it's going to be compared to Lost. I think very quickly it will set out its own footprint, and people will understand the distinctions between the two worlds. So, for me, it's not a huge thing or problematic."
2) It is big and cinematic. In the pilot, we see the near-destruction of Los Angeles, massive car crashes, a helicopter slam into a building and a jet fighter crash into a city street. Footage previewed for us on Monday revealed even more big set pieces, including the sinking of a city bus into a park lake in the middle of Los Angeles.
"We really are telling, in some ways, like, a 24-hour movie, in a way," Goyer says. "My aim is to sort of do what I do best, which is really welcome these characters into your home, really dig deep into them in a way that you really can't do with movies. I have a lot of respect for what [Lost and Fringe creator] J.J. [Abrams] does. I think he goes for it. I think his shows, they don't feel like cheesy TV shows."
Goyer adds: "If you look at this season as a whole, not all the pyrotechnics happen in the pilot. ... We definitely did some things in the first eight episodes already that I don't think people have ever done on television before. I love it when they say, 'You want to do what? We don't do that on television.' And I say, 'Well, we're not shooting this like a TV show. We're shooting this like a feature, so suck it up.' Sink a bus. Right, they're like, 'You can't do that with real people.' And I'm like, 'Well, we're doing it, so let's figure out a way to do it.'
3) It's not a science fiction show.
Really?
"I mean, there's one [sci-fi gimmick], the flash-forwards," Goyer says. "The audiences won't know for a couple of years what the ultimate cause of them were, so I don't think it really matters."
Beyond that, says co-star Davenport, who plays physicist Lloyd Simcoe (the only character carried over from Sawyer's book): "The high-conceptness of this is kind of gotten out of the way very quickly. The event occurs, and then we're kind of left with the repercussions of it. The phrase that David used was an intimate epic, and I thought that was very elegantly put. And it is that because one of the things that we find we can't when we get new episodes is the parameters of the stories is sort of unlimited. You basically have 6 billion people with knowledge about their futures. You can do anything you like with that."
(Between us, it really is a science fiction show in the same way Lost is, but we'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now.)
4) It's the story of one man's struggle to avoid a hellish future. Joseph Fiennes' FBI agent Mark Benford, whose life is going well, catches a glimpse of himself back on the bottle, divorced from his loving wife, obsessively tracking a case and targeted for execution by unknown assassins. And that's just in the pilot.
"We're going to see a man taken to the brink, taken to the extreme," Fiennes says, adding: "Everything's beautiful, and it's great, ... and then suddenly the world comes crashing down. ... We're going to see him being ripped apart, tested. ... And it's really about the moral boundaries that you're prepared to cross, or you're having to confront, in order to change the future, change the outcome of what you see."
5) It's not a procedural. Though it deals in part with the FBI investigation of the flash-forward phenomenon, and several of its main characters are agents, the show won't dwell on the cop elements or case of the week, a la Fringe. Other characters are doctors; still others are everyday people.
"It's very much about human relationships," Davenport says.
6) It's not like anything you've ever seen on television.
Seriously.
"What it is is a very ambitious story with a lot of layers and a lot of plot twists and a lot of interesting things happening in it," show runner Guggenheim says. "What it's not is an impenetrable Byzantine puzzle box."
As if to underscore the show's oddness, Goyer screened a few other clips from the first four episodes on Monday: One highlighted a very broad humorous exchange between the otherwise world-weary FBI agent Benford and his FBI handler Stan Wedeck (Courtney B. Vance), whose flash-forward takes place in the bathroom. Another showcased a grim telephone exchange between John Cho's Demitri Noh (Benford's partner) and a mysterious woman (played by 24's Shohreh Aghdashloo) in Hong Kong, in which she warns Noh that he will be murdered on March 15, 2010. (Goyer confirmed to SCI FI Wire that Aghdashloo will be a recurring player in FlashForward.)
A third clip goes back to the day of the flash-forward, in a park in Los Angeles, in which everyone falls to the ground in slow motion, backed by the quirky music of Bjork's "It's Oh So Quiet."
"We picked those three scenes to kind of show you the different gambit of the things we will be doing in the show," Goyer says. He added: "There are scary moments, there are, we hope, funny moments, heartbreaking moments, thoughtful moments, sexy moments. So we just decided to pick three different kinds of scenes."
(Click on the images of the show's sets below for larger versions.)
Showing posts with label David Goyer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label David Goyer. Show all posts
David Goyer: Everything you need to know about FlashForward
Thursday, September 17, 2009
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Batman and Blade scripter David S. Goyer has a new TV show this fall. On Flash Forward, a global disaster causes everyone to see a vision of their lives on April 29. The premise is fantasy, but it was inspired by real life tragedy.
“I had this experience,” Goyer said. “I was in France immediately after 9/11. It's definitely baked into the DNA of this show. I never had this experience where there was this enormous outpouring of sympathy, A, for being American, which doesn't typically happen in Paris. I would be in these bistros, in these bars, and I would have complete strangers crying and coming up to me and hugging me and holding me and talking about where they were and what they were doing. What were they doing when 9/11 happened? I thought, obviously, it was horrendous, but it was also, for this one moment, for this brief period of time, this profoundly kind of connecting experience for a lot of the world. And so we were trying to also go in that direction with this. I mean, you will have people in our show, you could walk into a bar a total stranger. ‘What did you see?’ And these people might start talking to each other because everyone on this planet, 6.8 billion people, experienced it. And that's this, also, kind of wonderful thing that brings the whole world closer together.”
Some of the futures are not so pleasant. One man sees himself descend into alcoholism while his wife sees herself in love with another man. “Look, I think that one of the primary reasons why people come to drama is for conflict, and I think that lots of marriages in real life have lots of issues they deal with: responsibility, infidelity, A, B, and C. And to me, one of the interesting things about this is this show hopes to kind of traffic in the gamut of human experience.”
Once everybody realizes they all had visions of the same day, they get down to business right away of piecing together April 29. It doesn’t take even the entire first episode for the world to be on board with this high concept.
“I mean, look, that's the razor's edge that the show traffics in, but the thing that we say to the actors all the time, and we talk about this in episode 2, in episode 3, in episode 4, and onward. It's not like these characters were watching a movie. They had a sensory experience of what happened. So whatever they saw, if they were cold, if they were hot, whatever they heard, whatever they were emotionally feeling was real to them. So when Olivia comes back from that moment, she had genuine feelings of love for this other man, and yet she can't escape it. It was real. And the same for Joe when he's drinking. I mean, he's been sober for seven years, but he had that physiological feeling. I think that's the more interesting aspect of the show, honestly. I mean, I think that the kind of mayhem or the high jinks is cool, but what I'm hoping people will really tune in for is the kind of meat and potatoes of just how people are wrestling with all of these things and the gamut of human experience in John Cho.”
The big question week to week will be: can they change the future they saw? “That, again, is part of the heart and soul of the show and the debate and where I think a lot of the drama and suspense can be mined, is whether, if you saw your future, what would you do about it, and can you change it? And we've basically broken our series regulars down into three categories. A third of them fear the future, and they are trying to do everything they can to fight it. A third of them, their futures are aspirational, and they are trying to do everything they can to make it happen. And a third of them are kind of agnostic because they just don't understand what it means, and they are trying to figure it out. Now, maybe fighting it is what causes it to happen, or maybe trying to cause it is what causes it not to happen. I mean, that is sort of what the show is about.”
Source: CanMag
One of the most anticipated new genre shows of the fall is the adaptation of Robert J. Sawyer’s best-selling novel, “Flash Forward.”
As the premiere gets closer, executive producer David Goyer has been promoting the series and giving fans a better idea of what they can expect when the series debuts in September. Goyer spoke to critics during the recent ABC presentation at the TCA tour, saying that the show is an “ensemble” piece with at least 11 regular characters when the action begins.
In the series, every person in the world blacks out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds, during which time everyone has a vision of the future—April 29, 2010, to be specific—and the show’s characters begin to piece together what happened.
Goyer said that one of the first things fans will notice is the show isn’t going to “just tread water” waiting for April 29.
“It will become abundantly clear within the first four episodes that’s not what we’re doing. We try to sit down and think “What would the audience expect or not expect?” and, again, as viewers, “What would we want to see?”,” he told SciFi Wire. ” I would be annoyed if a show like this just treaded water, so we make some very bold moves in the first few episodes.”
“We are going to be telling a lot of sometimes an A, B, C and D story,” he continued. “Not every character will be in every episode, but the promise we made to the network is every episode you would at least see more of one of our cast member’s flash-forward, and you would see a new character’s flash-forward.”
Goyer added that he and the writing team have a three-year plan for the series. He said the team wants to “swing for the fences” instead of playing it safe. He also said it was important to make sure the pay-offs for the audience are mapped out and reached.
“They’re certainly going to get a lot of answers by episode 13,” Goyer said. “I also know that Steve and the rest of the group at ABC have shown an enormous confidence in us and have extended an enormous amount of commitment to the show. So, look, if you’re not going to try to be ambitious, what’s the point? Yes, shows get canceled, and some of my favorite shows have been canceled, but I think that’s like saying I had a bad date, and I’m never going to date again.”
“Flash Forward” debuts in September on ABC.
SOURCE: Slice of SciFi
