ABC have released 7 new FlashForward promotional photos.

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Copyright: ABC

You can find previous FlashForward promo pictures here.

You can always tell when a show is really beginning to gear – the powers that be give more and more interviews and use plenty of buzz words to hype the show – and rightly so. As is the case with an interview the FlashForward producers, David S. Goyer and Marc Guggenheim, did with the FutonCritic. Here’s a splatter-gun list of what they talk about:

Is Dominic Monaghan joining the cast?: The producers are tight-lipped, neither confirming nor denying the arrival of a “Lost” son. This is obviously clever marketing – even if Monaghan isn’t part of the cast he is signed to AN ABC show, so there’s no harm in taking advantage of the speculation. That said, I think it’s almost certain that he IS set to star in FlashForward – but that’s just my opinion. By the looks of things we’ll have to wait a bit longer for official confirmation.

Do they have a plan?: Simple answer, yes they do. According to Goyer they wrote the first half of the Pilot before the writers strike and the second half after it. Goyer believes that writing the Pilot so far ahead gave them the advantage of being able to formulate the ‘stepping stones’. Goyer reveals that they (the producers) know the final shot of the first season, have the second season worked out and know how the entire series ends. It’s a case of expanding or contracting as per the requirements and popularity of the show. The first 11 episodes will be character centric, which will please “Lost” fans.

How many seasons?: The producers want at least 3 seasons but they have enough material for up to seven seasons.

Twists and turns?: The creators may want to differentiate FlashForward from “Lost”, but they realise that there are some elements that are well worth developing as part of FlashForward’s DNA. So there will be mysteries, twists, turns and smoke and mirrors. They say that they wont “trick” the audience, but they do expect FlashForward to subvert peoples expectations. So basically, what we see..might not be all that’s actually going on.

Story-telling structure?: FlashForward will consist of an overarching story with ‘stand-alone’ components.

Sci-fi?: Don’t be too quick to classify FlashForward as a sci-fi show.

The date – April 29, 2009?: Apparently this wont actually marry with the season finale after all – instead the date will fall during one of the first season episodes, but it’s obviously still an important moment in the mythos of the show.

Fun tip?: Keep your eyes peeled for a ‘hot pocket’ in the Pilot episode.

Spin-off?: FlashForward Latin America. It could happen.

This is just a brief overview, head on over to the excellent FutonCritic to read the entire interview.

Film.com predicts ABC’s Flash Forward will be a “winner” this Fall:

Flash Forward: Already the critical darling of the Fall, this confusing, Lost-esque serialized sci-fi drama will leave some people rabidly excited and others aching to change the channel. Right now it’s too early to tell which half will be the majority, but like Lost, the scales may tip in the show’s favor at the beginning.

Here are a batch of promotional photos for ABC’s Flash Forward Pilot episode. Click the jump to see many more:

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Copyright ABC

You can find more Flash Forward promo photos here and here.

Flash Forward author, Robert J. Sawyer, has shared his thoughts on the pilot for the show, and reveals that it will surprise and thrill. Here’s his glowing appraisal in full detail:

I’m astonished by just how much online and print coverage there’s been for the pilot for Flash Forward, the TV series being developed by David S. Goyer and Brannon Braga based on my novel of the same name.

People have been poring over what’s purported to be drafts of the script, supposed casting-call notes, and so on, looking for clues, and they’re dissecting every word that everyone has said about the series. (It’s been fascinating watching the broken-telephone aspect as, for instance, the original coverage in The Hollywood Reporter has been rewritten or summarized for other venues.)

Some online commentators have suggested that any TV show is going to be dumbed down from its source material. That’s emphatically not the case here. Brannon and David are staggeringly intelligent guys, and they have put an enormous amount of thought into how to ramp up the concepts in my book.

It’s often said that one has to cut out and water down when turning a 350-page novel into a two-hour movie. That may be so, but these guys are taking a 350-page novel as the jumping-off point for a hundred-hour TV series. That requires an expansion of vision.

What they’ve added to my original notion (and it’s a lot) is wonderful, and intelligent, and well-thought-out; what they’ve changed (and that’s a lot, too) is changed in thoughtful, clever ways. If you know my novel, you have a good sense of what thematically Flash Forward is going to be about — but, trust me, you will be surprised and thrilled by what David and Brannon have come up with (there was a point while reading the pilot script that I literally gasped).

Remember, David S. Goyer will be the showrunner on Flash Forward: this is the guy who reinvented Batman with Batman Begins. He doesn’t do slavish adaptation; he does brilliant extrapolation and re-imagining.

It’s also often said that Hollywood doesn’t really understand science fiction. These guys do. Brannon Braga is a Hugo Award-winner, and deservedly so, for Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s fabulous finale, “All Good Things …,” which he co-authored with Ronald D. Moore. Brannon also co-authored Star Trek: First Contact, which is a brilliant piece of science fiction.

And both David and Brannon read printed SF. In fact, I daresay that David S. Goyer is better read in the field than I am, and is right up to date on modern stuff. When we first met, we chatted a bit about other things we were each doing, and I mentioned I edited the science-fiction imprint for a Canadian publisher. David asked who I published, and I said, “Well, our most recent book is by Matthew Hughes.” And David instantly said, “Oh, yes. He wrote Black Brillion.” Which, of course, is right: these guys know their stuff.

So, Flash Forward is in very good hands. And, even if you’ve read my book, you’re going to be pleasantly surprised by the twists and turns. People keep comparing the Flash Forward TV series to Lost, and that’s apt in this sense: David and Brannon have crafted something that’s as complex, intriguing, and weighty as Lost, and, just as with Lost, if you think you’ve got it all figured out, trust me — you don’t.

Source: SFWriter

Here are some more on location photos from the Flash Forward Pilot filming.

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If these photos are anything to go by, this looks like being an epic Pilot!

Thanks to Gibs for sending these to us and IAmNoStalker for the photos

Lindsay, from the IAmNoStalker Blog, happened upon filming of the Flash Forward Pilot episode in LA the other day. Lucky for us, she managed to take some super snaps of what she described as “a rather large film shoot that shut down an entire block in Downtown Los Angeles”.

She goes on to describe more of what she saw:

And what a production it was!!  I’ve don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie set that was quite so large or quite so involved.  And what amazed me the most was how realistic everything seemed.  It truly felt as if we were viewing a real life disaster area.  The scene being filmed centered around a major accident involving several overturned cars and two totalled buses.  If you look closely at the above pics, you’ll notice that both buses used in the filming feature advertising for ABC shows (Lost and Desperate Housewives) on their sides.  LOL   Gee, I wonder what network this show will be airing on. 

Nice to see ABC cross promoting their products, although more Lost and less Desperate Housewives, please! Check out more photos after the jump:

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Source: IAmNoStalker

The Televisionary has a peak into the future and gives us an early low-down on the Pilot script for ABC’s upcoming sci-fi drama “Flash Forward”. Needless to say, spoilers abound:

ABC’s new drama pilot Flash Forward, written by David S. Goyer (Batman Begins, Blade;) and Brannon Braga (Enterprise, Threshold) and loosely based on Robert J. Sawyer’s 1999 novel of the same name, might just be the one do the trick. With Lost set to end in May 2010, the network seems hellbent on finding a suitable replacement for the series and Goyer and Braga’s project seems the best suited so far to capture the imaginations of Lost’s devoted band of obsessive followers.

It was with much curiosity that I sat down last week to read the pilot script for Flash Forward, entitled “No More Good Days.” (If you’re at all spoiler-phobic, I suggest you avoid reading what follows as I’ll be fleshing out the logline that’s been floating about the media and discussing specific plot points from Goyer and Braga’s pilot script.)

What is Flash Forward about? In a nutshell, it’s the chaos that ensues after everyone on the planet blacks out for two minutes and seventeen seconds. But that’s not entirely true. First, about 40 million or so poor souls don’t survive the global event; airplanes fall from the sky, cars collide, people fall down stairs, drown, etc. as they lose consciousness during whatever they’re doing at that moment. Second, the effect isn’t so much a blackout but a Lost-appropriate flash forward in time as each of the survivors experiences a snippet from their own future during that time loss. And not just any moment, but a very specific moment five months from then: 8 pm on April 20th, 2010.

Why do each of them witness that specific moment? That’s one of the script’s central mysteries, along with what caused the worldwide blackout, whether it was a natural event like an earthquake or whether it was a man-made, terrorist-style attack, and whether the future can be altered. (Other possibilities for the Event not discussed in the script: extraterrestrial or a 4400-style warning from the future. And, personally, I would have made that future date, oh, sometime during the end of May sweeps.)

The survivors are, in many cases, deeply disturbed by the visions of their own futures and the FBI, among other agencies, begins to look for patterns emerging in the overlapping visions of everyday people, visions that include a new rollout of Apple’s Lion OS XI operating system, Dow Jones highs, and other facets of the future that could change the course of life around them. But that comes later; mass pandemonium is first step immediately after the Event as people attempt to make sense of what has occurred and make their way to their loved ones.

So let’s meet our cast of characters. Los Angeles-based FBI agent Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes), a recovering alcoholic, and his partner Dominic Witten (John Cho) are in pursuit of a group of suspected terrorists when the Event occurs. Mark has a vision of himself, badly cut up, beaten, and unshaven at the FBI field office. He stands in front of a white board containing elements of a case codenamed MOSAIC: a photograph of a badly burned doll, the name D. Gibbons, etc. when he hears two people approaching outside. He takes a swig from his hip flask (obviously having fallen off the wagon), draws his gun, and takes the safety off. Whoever is out there, they are gunning for him. Dominic, meanwhile, experiences no vision whatsoever and begins to fear that it means he’ll be dead, a suspicion made all the more real when he receives a phone call from a woman in South Africa who claims to have seen a vision of a newspaper article about Dominic’s murder.

Their boss Stan Wedeck (Law & Order: Criminal Intent’s Courtney B. Vance) quickly tries to take control of this bewildering turn of events. Computer-savvy agent Janice Hawk (Welcome to the Captain’s Christine Woods) reluctantly admits that she had a vision of herself with her baby daughter. The only problem is that she’s not pregnant and she can’t conceive as she recently battled cervical cancer. (Curious that.) The FBI quickly look to solve the riddle of what happened and try to find overlapping visions of the future that can corroborate others’ stories (hence the Mosaic in Mark’s vision), leading Janice to discovers a quite shocking revelation about the blackout, one that could provide some answers… or merely more questions. (Sorry, folks, I won’t reveal exactly what she finds!)

Mark’s wife Olivia (Lost’s Sonya Walger) is an emergency room doctor at UCLA Medical Center; she’s involved in an operation during the Event and nearly loses the patient. Olivia and Mark have been through some rough times during his drinking and their marriage is barely holding on by a thread. So what then of her vision of her own future, one that she shares with a stranger in the bed she now sleeps in with Mark? Curious. Olivia has little time to ponder her fate when a child, Dylan, is brought in; Olivia performs emergency surgery on him but before she does, he recognizes her and calls her by her name. Hell, he even refers to the rooster cookie jar in her home that contains Nilla wafers. Meanwhile, Dylan’s father Lloyd Simcoe (Swingtown’s Jack Davenport) attempts to reach his son from Northern California. In a twist of coincidence (or is it?), he just happens to be the mysterious stranger in Olivia’s vision with whom she is romantically involved five months in the future.

Other characters in Flash Forward’s sprawling cast include Mark and Olivia’s daughter Charlie, who says that she had “a bad dream” during the Event and presages major disaster ahead for the survivors when she says that there are “no more good days”; Charlie’s teenage babysitter Nicole who views the Event as a punishment from God; Olivia’s fellow doctor Bryce Varley, who was about to commit suicide when the Event occurred; Mark’s AA sponsor Aaron, who has a vision of his daughter Shawna–killed overseas in the military–alive and well; and New Scotland Yard FBI liaison Inspector Fiona Banks who has a shared vision with FBI agent Gough about something called the Rutherford Case.

Whew.

While Goyer and Braga’s script stumbles in a few parts and the dialogue could use a little tweaking in some places (the scene between Dominic and Kathryn was a little on the nose, for example), the overall result is pretty damn strong, offering up a potential series that–like Lost before it–tackles the notions of fate versus free will, preordained destiny versus random chaos, and a life-altering experience that will shake several characters’ perceptions, outlooks, and core identities as they adapt to new circumstances. In order words: Big Life Issues, all nicely wrapped up in a genre series that will fulfill the needs of fans of action, sci-fi, drama, romance, etc. and attract men and women of all ages.

Overall, Flash Forward is an extremely formidable offering for series contention. And while many networks have strayed from overly complex serialized dramas with large casts of characters of late, Flash Forward could be the one to buck this trend. ABC knows that it has to find a replacement for Lost sooner rather than later and, if handled properly, this could be a suitable contender to the throne.

I would be extremely surprised, given the level of talent that ABC Studios has already attracted to this project, if Flash Forward doesn’t earn itself a place on ABC’s 2009-10 schedule. The mere fact that Jack Davenport has been cast in such a small role in the pilot script (he has about 30 seconds worth of screen time in this undated draft) leads me to believe that the studio and network have major plans for this project.

Given the strength of the pilot script and the potential for franchise possibilities (not to mention the opportunity to offer LostFlash Forward to series. fans a new fount for complex mysteries), I’m already looking forward to see just what Goyer and Braga have up their sleeves for the series… and just what new tragedies will befall Mark and the others as they seek answers. One need not have a flash forward of their own to see that ABC would be wise to order

Stay tuned.

Source: Televisionary