Hurley makes the leap to Alcatraz , the new time-bending series from the makers of Fringe and Star Trek . Tara Bennett reports...
As you'll know from the latest issue of SFX , we're very excited about the new show from the mind of producer JJ Abrams. Alcatraz , an equal parts procedural/sci-fi mythology drama, is mostly set in the infamous island prison. It involves time travel, tells a good portion of its story through flashback narrative, co-stars Jorge "Hurley" Garcia and is being showrun by former Lost writer Liz Sarnoff.
"It's the kind of thing where people go, 'Alright we know this happened - Alcatraz was closed in 1963. We know everyone was taken off but they're like why did it close?'" explains Garcia, speaking to SFX 's Tara Bennett. "The idea was to come up with a crazy reason for why that happened and then create a show around it which is where this comes from. It's pretty exciting to me. This is the kind of show that just the title alone will get some people interested, for sure. Everyone has heard of it and they know that really bad people were there. Bad people are intriguing!"
The high concept is that in 1963 the maximum security prison shut when all the convicts vanished. Then they start showing up in the present day. A team including Rebecca Madsen (Sarah Jones), Agent Emerson Hauser ( Jurassic Park 's Sam Neill) and Diego "Doc" Soto (that's Garcia) track down and re-arrest the time-travelling prisoners. You can watch the trailer here:
"It’s actually easier to say how alike [ Alcatraz ] is to Lost in the sense that both are about an island, they were both shrouded in mystery and there is a guy who is on this show that looks a lot like a guy that was on Lost ," laughs Garcia, when asked about how different the two shows will feel. "That’s pretty much where the similarities stop. I do know that the producers had a meeting at one point with Fox execs with their show bible, so they do know the big picture story. I have gotten used to working in the dark and I dig it. I got a little hint of something that kind of revealed more about why my character is so obsessed with the criminal element and I’m excited about that. It comes pretty early in the first season."
Alcatraz premieres on Fox in the US in the New Year. For more information about Alcatraz , and the other big new shows coming out of America, you should get hold of issue 214 of SFX while it's still available - these quick links will take you through to our online order page , our US subscriptions page , or our Zinio page where a download of the mag is available now .
