PRODUCTION OF 24 TO TAKE A BREAK

    The production of cult hit series 24 is being closed down for more than two weeks – because the producers do not like the direction it was taking.
    Work will halt for 18 days after the completion of hour 18 on September 15, giving the writers a break to come up with a better storyline.
    Executive producer Howard Gordon told Entertainment Weekly: “We had a couple of scripts that we weren’t happy with.
    “We just couldn’t get this direction to work, and we found another one that we liked better, so we wound up retooling it.”
    The seventh series of the drama, starring Kiefer Sutherland as counter-terrorist agent Jack Bauer and Mary Lynn Rajskub as computer wizard Chloe O’Brian, has been plagued by troubles.
    The first eight episodes had been shot when Hollywood was closed down by a writers’ strike last autumn, and Fox decided to start again and delay it until 2009.
    Before the strike the production faced disruption because of Sutherland’s drunk-driving conviction and 48-day jail sentence.
    He originally planned to check in to jail on December 21, his 41st birthday, to take advantage of the show’s Christmas break, but when the strike was announced he started his sentence on December 5, hoping the writers would be back at work when he was released.
    Production shutdowns like this one are usually an indication that there is a big problem, but Gordon insists there is no cause to worry and that work is actually ahead of schedule.
    He said: “The only, only, only concern at all is getting it right. Our feeling was this: we’re so happy with what we’ve done so far, and to the extent that we had the luxury of time, we said, ‘Why not make it as good as we could?’”
    A two-hour prequel, set in South Africa several months before the events of day seven, has been finished and will air in the United States in November.