It seems as if anytime a TV show ends there is talk that it will continue on as a film or perhaps even a series of films. Whether it was just pie-in-the-sky speculation or there were actual plans, it just doesn’t happen most of the time.
When it ended in 2010, the Fox thriller 24 joined the chorus of voices promising a jump from the small to big screen. Premiering in the fall of 2001, each of the show’s eight season’s chronicled one 24 hour period in the life of Jack Bauer (Keither Sutherland), an agent for a top secret government organization tasked with protecting the country from terrorist threats. Each hour-long episode was presented in roughly real time, making a season a 24 hour day. How a two-hour movie would replicate the real-time, day long conceit was anyone’s guess, but a script was worked on and Training Day director Antoine Fuqua had been signed on to helm the project.
But after a hoped-for production start kept being postponed, it started to look bleak for the film. And now Fuqua has confirmed the worse for the project in an interview with indiewire –
Yeah, that’s not happening. I don’t think it’s gonna happen at all, definitely not with me… I met with Kiefer [Sutherland], Fox wanted to do it, it was a matter of his schedule before he went off to do his new show [’Touch‘]. I don’t think he was able to get a proper agreement with Fox. The time just passed, and I went off to go to what I was doing.
It sounds as if Fuqua is tacitly acknowledging the rumors that one of the main reasons the project kept being delayed was that Fox and Sutherland could not agree on a fee for his services, with the studio reportedly lowballing the actor.
So it looks as if, at least for now, 24‘s Counter-Terrorism Unit will remained closed.
