News about the show "The 4400" -- X-PHILES WORLD-TV Watchers Room

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Date Posted: 00:05:31 10/23/04 Sat
Author: detoured
Subject:

News about the show "The 4400"

One or two of you watched that didn't you?

Producer Hopes to Reassemble '4400' Team

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) It's one thing to get an order for 13 episodes, it's quite another thing to get it on the air. After premiering last summer as a very successful six-episode limited series, the science-fiction saga "The 4400" is set to return next summer on USA Network with a second season of 13 hours. "I'm having a good day," co-executive producer Scott Peters tells Zap2it.com on Wednesday, Oct. 20, the day after the announcement. "It's thrilling. We knew it was coming all along, coming and coming and coming, and finally -- it's still great to get the official phone call."

Despite its success, "The 4400" was caught in a business vortex not of its own making. Its studio, Viacom Productions, has been folded into Paramount Network Productions; and its broadcast outlet, USA Network, was involved in the recent merger between Universal and NBC.

When "The 4400" finished its run, none of the producers or actors was retained on contract. The executive producer and show runner, Ira Steven Behr, has since gone on to CBS' "dr. vegas," while his predecessor, Rene Echevarria, is now working on NBC's midseason drama "Medium." But, says Peters, he and executive producer Maira Suro are back, and there are hopes for more.

"The idea is to try to get Ira back," he says. "This literally happened yesterday, so we're all reeling from the news and pulling ourselves together to get into a budget meeting tomorrow. Maira and I are going to talk about the possibility of having him come over, because we're not going to be up and running until March in terms of shooting. This means we have to start writing earlier than that, but not tomorrow.
"Anyway, these are all discussions that we're going to have, because we'd sure like to have him come back, and then figure out what the rest of the team is."

As the production team reassembles, a bigger challenge may be reassembling the large cast for the drama, in which 4,400 people returned mysteriously in a ball of light. Some had been missing a short time, some for decades. All hadn't aged and didn't remember where they had been. Some returned with extraordinary or even dangerous abilities.

The cast included Joel Gretsch ("Taken") and Jacqueline McKenzie as federal agents dealing with the returnees, with Peter Coyote as their boss.

Among those playing returnees were Mahershalalhashbaz Ali, Laura Allen, Patrick Flueger and Michael Moriarty. Mark Valley ("Keen Eddie"), currently a regular on ABC's "Boston Legal," joined midway through the run, as did Billy Campbell. "We're still negotiating with actors I want," Peters says. "I want everybody back, because there's a winning combination. Right now, Joel and Jackie are definitely coming back, which is good, because it would be an awfully difficult show to do without them. It would be hard to do it without any of them, as a matter of fact, because they're all integral to the success of the show. "We have to get Billy Campbell back. He's tied up at the moment, but we're going to try to figure out a way to get him back. There was a big chance along the summer that we were going to lose Joel. It was a matter of, we didn't have a green light, and he got an offer -- people gotta make a living. "But he's a strong, moral person. He told us way back when that, no matter what, he would do the show. It was a difficult decision for him to be in, but ultimately, I got to call him yesterday and go, 'You made the right decision!'" As for Valley, Peters feels his "character arc was kind of sewn up, but that doesn't mean he couldn't come back in some capacity. These kind of characters, we could have them step in for a couple-episode arc if necessary." The return of

"The 4400" may be proof positive that, even in the rough-and-tumble world of television, faith is rewarded. "They kept saying to us all summer long," Peters recalls, "'Listen, there's no chance it's not coming back.' We're like, 'Yeah, but you haven't told us officially yet.' Everyone's like, 'It's a no-brainer. Everybody would lose their jobs if they didn't bring the show back. I'm like, 'Well, they should.' "But they're good to their word. They just had to hammer out the business end of it."

At present, there's no word on when "The 4400" will be repeated, but a Paramount spokesman reveals the studio is planning to release the six-episode first season on DVD on Dec. 21.

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Replies:

Re: News about the show "The 4400" -- Trish Davidson, 20:10:15 09/05/05 Mon
- SPOILERS -- CW, 07:53:10 09/09/05 Fri