According to tvguide.com, plans exist for Jack Bauer to become the next James Bond or Jason Bourne. While it is well-known across the “24” fan community that Bauer has movie plans, it is still speculated whether his excursion to the big screen will be a one-time thing or a regular occurence.
The article linked to above now cites Howard Gordon stating that Jack might become a regular visitor to the big screen:
“Our idea is to make Jack Bauer someone we can revisit on a regular basis.”
I’ll leave you to judge for yourself whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I’m approaching it with mixed feelings. While I will probably miss the show on TV, I’m not sure how a show that fundamentally depended on real-time and a 24-hour time span can even successfully transition into 2 hours of screen time. Sure, we had “Redemption”, but I’m not a big fan of it, either. Redemption worked as a sort of a prequel to the following season, but a movie would be a stand-alone story and a whole different ball game.
The other reservation I have is about trying to raise Bauer to an indestructible status of James Bond, and that’s essentially what would happen if he became a serial movie killer. Is this really necessary? Won’t Jack become just another action hero? Won’t the essence of “24” get lost in the process? Knowing that Jack will come back for another movie would make any real tension impossible because you’d know he can’t die (once I stopped believing they’d ever kill Jack on screen, that seriously dampened my “thrill” watching the seasons). Kiefer Sutherland has been saying for quite some time that he believed that Jack could go on as a character even if someone else played him. I suppose this might be the beginning idea of that transition. Just like Bond.
Nothing is etched in stone yet, of course, as a “revisit” will likely depend on how well the first movie does. So we’ll see.
In the meantime, let’s try to look forward to the movie and the return of
“…some familiar faces”
in the (first) movie, notably Chloe O’Brian. I’m still hoping for Tony, too.
More details on the film include “cold war themes”, and Jack’s remaining status of a “fugitive from everyone”, at least at the start of the movie. So it’s probably safe to say that Jack still has it in for the Russians. Suwarow is still alive, after all.