Not again.  The long road to get 24's seventh season to the air has hit another snag in a long, arduous line of snags.  Production was delayed over a year ago, rewrites were had, there were more delays, then came the writers' strike and Kiefer Sutherland's DUI incarceration, the season was then put on hold for an entire year and, now, when it finally looked as if 24 was free of production drama, production has been delayed once more.  The good news is that it looks as if 24 will premiere in January 2009 on schedule.  When production halts, eighteen episodes will already be in the can, but still – another delay, this time for creative reasons, has to make one wonder about the quality of the final product.  Executive producer of 24, Howard Gordon, has decided that the series needs a two week production hiatus for rewrites.  He was upset with the direction the scripts for the last six episodes took.  The hiatus will being after production wraps on episode eighteen. 

Gordon plans to resume the production of 24 on October 9.  The irony here is that a two-week hiatus on 24 during a normal season might just be crippling.  However, since this season was delayed an entire year, 24 is way ahead of schedule and can afford to tweak their scripts.  Funnily enough, I bet that the writers wish they could have re-written the final six episodes of season six if the option was there. 

You can look at this news in one of two ways.  You can be positive, and say that this is a great thing, and that the 24 producers want to make sure that they're putting forth the best possible product for the fans of 24.  Given the fact that they have all this extra time, why not make sure the scripts are as good as they can possibly be?  Or, you can be negative and take this as a sign of bad things to come.  With all the extra time they've already had, why do they need this extra two weeks?  Are they drastically changing the arc of the final six episodes?  Does this have anything to do with the recently announced return of Elisha Cuthbert?  We'll probably have to wait until late March or early April for the answers to these questions.


-Oscar Dahl, BuddyTV Senior Writer
Source: TVGuide
(Image Courtesy of FOX)