Fringe, Lost creator J.J. Abrams' new pilot, has a couple of cast members.  Fringe is in the same vein as X-Files, and it involves a mad genius scientist named Walter Bishop, who will start the pilot out in a mental institution.  With the help of an FBI Agent and Bishop's son, the trio will investigate paranormal activity.  Or something like that.  The details are still fuzzy at this point, though it has been announced that the budget for the two hour pilot has been set at an astounding $10 million.  Kirk Acevedo (Oz) and Mark Valley (Boston Legal) have both been cast on Fringe, but the specific roles have yet to be determined.

Fringe is J.J. Abrams fourth television series (Felicity, Alias, Lost) he's had a hand in creating, though he's become less and less involved in the shows as time has passed.  He's basically a non-entity on Lost at this point, and I think we can safely assume his role on Fringe will be similar.  The pilot was written by the white-hot screen writing team of Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who have been teamed with Abrams constantly over the last few years.  They were writers on Alias, they wrote the Abrams-directed Mission: Impossible 3 and they wrote the screenplay for Abrams current project, Star Trek.  J.J. loves these guys. 

I find it interesting that Warner Brothers is going ahead with such a big budget pilot in the midst of the writers' strike.  Green lighting a ten million dollar pilot almost ensures that it will be picked up for at least thirteen episodes, but when will the networks to set a schedule?  No one knows when the strike is going to end.

Regardless, it's exciting to have another Abrams TV series to look forward to.  I wasn't a Felicity guy, but Alias and Lost are two of my favorite shows of the last decade.  It's been said that Fringe will be like other Abrams shows in that the series will have an overarching mythology.


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