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Bones Spinoff Casts Lead Role

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Fox has cast the title character in its new Bones spinoff, The Locator. Geoff Stults, who’s had ongoing roles on Happy Town, October Road, Reunion, and 7th Heaven, will take on the main character Walter Sherman.

The Locator‘s premise will be introduced on an upcoming episode of Bones, where Stult’s former military policeman is depicted as a paranoid eccentric who can find anything. On Bones, Sherman won’t get along with Agent Booth, even though the two of them served together in Iraq. Dr. Brennan, on the other hand, will be find him fascinating. Academy Award nominee Michael Clarke Duncan has been cast as Sherman’s partner Leo, who’s described as “a tough, raw-hide, cowboy philosopher.”

First Look at Terra Nova

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While Fox‘s Superbowl XLV broadcast included trailers for all of this summer’s biggest blockbuster films and a whole heap of hilarious product commercials, Fox also worked in a short trailer for its big-budget scifi series Terra Nova (website). After endless casting and filming delays, Terra Nova has finally gotten off the ground, telling the story of a family in a destruction-filled future who join a program to go back to dinosaur times to try and get human society right a second time. The show is executive produced by Steven Spielberg.

If you missed it, you can get a glimpse of the dinos and other big-budget scenery in the trailer right here:

Fox Has Found Its Next ’24’

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As reported a month ago, Ethan Hawke really wants to be television’s next Jack Bauer. His new starring vehicle, Exit Strategy, has gotten an official pilot order from Fox, which should put it in line for a Fall 2011 premiere, should it get a full series pickup.

Exit Strategy is produced by Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci — co-creators of Fringe, and two of the hottest writer/producers in Hollywood — but it sounds like it has more in common with Alias than 24. Hawke leads a 5-member team of special CIA agents who are sent into the field to extract fellow operatives when a mission goes bad. Exit Strategy is expected to tackle a different crisis in a new country in each episode. No word yet on whether the show will showcase any of Kurtzman & Orci’s signature love of mythology (which they likely picked up from pal J.J. Abrams).

What’s more, the pilot will be directed by big-screen director Antoine Fuqua, who worked with Hawke on Training Day and Brooklyn’s Finest. David Guggenheim wrote the script, and Hawke himself will serve as the show’s producer (much like Kiefer Sutherland did on 24).

‘Heroes’ Creator Tim Kring Heads to Fox

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The mastermind behind NBC’s Heroes has landed a new gig at a rival network. But he’s holding firmly to his supernatural roots.

Tim Kring has sold Touch, his first pilot since Heroes’ cancellation, to Fox. Touch is an unconventional father/son drama about a dad who discovers that his mute, autistic son can predict events before they happen. Fox has given the potential series a pilot order, which means that the pilot will be cast and produced, and if Fox execs like it, they can give it a series order. If not, the pilot will likely never see the light of day.

Heroes had such potential in its first season, riveting viewers with one great twist after another. But then it bungled the season finale with a whimper of a climax, and was never able to recapture its greatness. There are endless theories on what went wrong with Heroes — ranging from a sprawling cast with too many divergent storylines, to characters that were written erratically with no memory of past events — but the bottom line is that Kring and his writers just fumbled the thing in the end.

I still believe Kring has some solid storytelling mojo in him, so here’s hoping that Touch, with its scaled-down cast size and far simpler premise, will hit a home run by leaving plenty of room to let the characters breathe.

New Details, Pics, Premiere Date for Terra Nova

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Terra Nova, Fox’s big-budget production from producer Steven Spielberg, will get a Spring premiere as an “early preview,” a la Glee. Two hours will be shown over two nights: Monday, May 23rd and Tuesday, the 24th. Fox was eager to paint the show less as a science fiction epic like Lost and more of a new take on the Old West, focusing on a “family trying to survive on a new frontier.”

New details have emerged about the much-discussed show from the Television Critics Association “up fronts” presentations this week. There’s already been a lot of drama surrounding Terra Nova before a single frame of footage has been seen, with reports of budget overruns, difficulties with casting, and writers dropping like flies. Fox worked hard to downplay this, explaining that most of these on-set reports were exaggerations.

The series’ high price tag is already being mitigated by sending the show direct to series after its pilot, saving money by not having to break down sets or send cast and crew home and then return them to Australia. Much of the pilot’s $14 million price tag, Fox claims, is being recouped or spread out to the entire first season. Showrunner Brannon Braga (Star Trek: Voyager, Enterprise) copped to the casting issues, explaining that casting a family on such a high-profile show was something they weren’t willing to rush. But Braga says that only one writer left the show after the pilot, so he’s not sure how that got blown so out of proportion.

In happier news, Braga reports that producer Steven Spielberg is heavily involved in the production, constantly coming up with “ingenious ideas” that get used on the show.

Terra Nova follows the Shannon family, who originate in the year 2149, where Earth has become overcrowded and heavily polluted, with (arguably) too much technology. When scientists discover a fracture in time, they build a portal that can take them back 100 million years, to a more primal time for nature, the time known as the Cretaceous Period. There, they come up with the idea of rebuilding civilization from scratch and trying to get it right this time. They found a fenced-in colony called Terra Nova, and select a group of people to live there, including the Shannon family. I guess you could call it The Reeeeeeeeeally Old West.

Jason O’Mara stars as Jim Shannon, the family’s patriarch, along with Shelley Conn as his wife Elisabeth. Landon Liboiron is 17-year-old Josh, Naomi Scott is 15-year-old Maddy, and Alana Mansour rounds out the family as 5-year-old Zoe. The cast also includes Avatar’s Stephen Lang as Commander Frank Taylor, the leader of the Terra Nova settlement. Christine Adams stars as Mira, the leader of a group opposed to Lang.

According to Fox, the Terra Nova settlement is filled with dinosaurs and “other prehistoric threats” (no idea what those might be), as well as “sinister external forces intent on destroying the new world.” Braga says that the show ultimately asks the question, “Can Utopia be built? Is it possible?”

Here’s my question: Why aren’t they worried about changing history? A high-tech human settlement plopped down in the middle of the Cretaceous Period? Won’t that completely alter humanity’s past, present, and future? Either way, with this level of production values and Spielberg’s involvement, it goes without saying that I’m in. What about you?

Check out the gallery of first stills from Terra Nova below.