Lost (spoilers)

[MacGuffin]

Lost Writers Eye The End

Producers of ABC's Lost told SCI FI Wire they know how the show will end, though the series finale won't happen until 2010. The producers even know what the final shot will look like, they said in interviews.

Co-creator and executive producer Damon Lindelof said that the writers will be working toward the end of the series over the next two years. "We always knew the ending," he said. "We just didn't know how much time to take before we got there. So, yes, it still completely fits with where we're at in the storytelling right now."

Lost will become more focused because the end is in sight, the producers added. "With 48 episodes to go, it's exciting to be working towards an endpoint we're already familiar with," Lindelof said.

During a press conference for the release of the Lost season-three DVD set on Dec. 11, executive producer Carlton Cuse said that the show will be using flash-forward scenes, but warned cryptically that "it would be wrong to think that the flash-forward you saw is the end of the series." Viewers got their first glimpse at a possible future in the third-season finale last spring.

Cuse added that he already has the final image of the series in mind. "Yes, we do know what the last image of the show is," Cuse said. "And it won't be a black screen!" he added, alluding to the controversial cut that ended HBO's The Sopranos. The fourth season of Lost starts Feb. 6, 2008.

[MacGuffin]

Voice cast: 'Lost' calls for Stevens
Source: Hollywood Reporter

The mysterious Minkowski, whose voice was heard on the other side of the satellite phone found by the "Lost" gang, now has a face as Fisher Stevens has been tapped to play the role on the ABC/ABC Studios series.

Stevens will recur as Minkowski on "Lost." The character, which was referenced several times toward the end of last season, was only heard talking to Jack (Matthew Fox) on the phone and told the survivors in the third-season finale in May that they will be rescued.

In the "Lost" fan blogosphere, the name of the character has been tied to German mathematician Hermann Minkowski, whose Minkowski space -- a four-dimensional system including the three dimensions of space plus the dimension of time -- was used in Einstein's theory of special relativity.

Stevens, who recently co-directed the critically praised documentary, "Crazy Love," is repped by Fortitude and the Collective.

[edison]

Kiwi stuntwoman Zoe Bell's acting career is rocketing ahead with a role in the hit television series Lost.

Bell, who grew up on Waiheke Island, makes her acting debut playing herself in the Quentin Tarantino movie Death Proof, which is to open in New Zealand on November 8.

Bell said from Los Angeles yesterday that her next project was in Hawaii filming episodes of Lost, starting next week.

The series, now in its fourth season, follows a group of passengers marooned on a mysterious island after their plane crashes.

Bell described it as "a little acting role" that would involve some stunt work.

She also has two upcoming action movie projects in which she has the lead role.

[MacGuffin]

'Lost' actor Daniel Dae Kim arrested

Actor Daniel Dae Kim was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving early Thursday by Honolulu police — the fourth actor on ABC's "Lost" to run into trouble with the law while filming in Hawaii.

Kim, who plays Korean tough guy Jin-Soo Kwon, was taken into custody before 3 a.m. local time and released after posting bail, police said.

A telephone message left with Kim's publicist after regular business hours was not immediately returned.

Other "Lost" stars facing problems with the police in Hawaii include Michelle Rodriguez and Cynthia Watros, whose characters were killed off in 2005 after they both were arrested and pleaded guilty to drunken driving.

Rodriguez, who played Ana Lucia, was sentenced to five days in jail and $357 in fines. Watros, who played Libby on the show, had her license suspended for 90 days and paid a $312 fine.

A year ago, Adewale Akinnuoye Agbaje, the actor who played "Mr. Eko," was arrested for a traffic violation and accused of disobeying a police officer and driving without a license. The charges were dropped, but his character also was killed off.

Kim, 38, was born in Busan, South Korea, but grew up in Easton, Pa., and has a masters degree from New York University.

On the show, he portrayed a chauvinistic thug who at first was overly protective of his wife, but then began to warm up to other characters on the mysterious island where "Lost" is set.

[Pubrick]

uh oh, someone asked for a raise!

[MacGuffin]

Strike Splits Lost Season

With the airwaves likely to be dominated by reality programming and reruns in the months ahead, Lost fans still have something to look forward to.

In the wake of Fox's decision to postpone the seventh season of 24 indefinitely, ABC has taken the opposite tack and decided to air the eight episodes of the castaway drama that were completed before the writers' strike, show runner Damon Lindelof said Wednesday.

But don't expect too much resolution before the series goes dark once again—the final episode, Lindelof said, will end in a cliffhanger that won't be resolved until the strike concludes.

"It's as much of a conclusion as, say, Ana-Lucia and Libby getting shot," Lindelof told E! Online TV columnist Kristin Dos Santos.

"An eight-episode season is an incomplete season, and I am not going to try to spin it any other way."

After wrapping up its third season in May, Lost was slated to return to the air with an uninterrupted, rerun-free 16-episode stretch, but obviously the strike has thrown a wrench into that scenario.

"I can't look the fans in the eye and tell them we're executing the original plan anymore," Lindelof said, adding that the storyline will likely have to be tweaked to accommodate the change in schedule.

The partial season is expected to kick off in February.

With the strike in its fourth day, networks now look likely to run out of fresh programming far sooner than anticipated, with most shows expected to be forced into reruns by Thanksgiving.

The networks had initially estimated that a backlog of finished scripts and completed episodes would keep most shows on the air into early 2008.

However, with many show runners refusing to cover nonwriting tasks on their series, including casting, editing and directing, production has stalled entirely on a number of prominent shows.

"When we're off the job, pretty much everything stops," Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry told the Los Angeles Times Wednesday.

Stars continued to turn out to show their support for the writers, with Ray Romano and the casts of shows including Ugly Betty and General Hospital taking their turns on the picket lines in L.A. Thursday. Robin Williams, David Duchovny, Julianne Moore, Tim Robbins, Roseanne Barr, Holly Hunter and David Hyde Pierce were spotted New York.

Meanwhile, speaking out in opposition of the strike Wednesday, former Disney chief Michael Eisner called the protests "insanity" and "too stupid" while warning writers they were giving up real income in the hopes of securing digital revenue that studios do not yet have.

"For a writer to give up today's money for a nonexistent piece of the future, they are misguided, they should not have gone on the strike," Eisner said at the Dow Jones/Nielsen Media and Money conference in New York. "I've seen stupid strikes, I've seen less stupid strikes, and this strike is just a stupid strike."

With no new talks between the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers on the horizon, Industry watchers now fear the strike is likely to continue well into 2008.

[MacGuffin]

Lost Deaths Necessary
Source: Sci-Fi Wire

Producers of ABC's Lost told reporters that they did a lot of soul-searching before they killed off characters at the end of the third season to pave the way for the upcoming fourth.

"This year was about the Others," co-executive producer Carlton Cuse said in a news conference. "The ending of the show we felt had to resolve the story of the Others. We promised a showdown. That showdown had profound consequences on both sides."

Damon Lindelof, the show's co-creator and producer, said the character of Charlie (Dominic Monaghan) was the hardest for him to accept. "It was incredibly hard to say goodbye to Charlie," he said. "We really felt the season needed to end with the loss of one of the major characters and began setting it up very early in the year. Charlie's sacrifice was brutal for us to write, and Dom's performance made it particularly brutal to watch. The reverberation of that death echoes right into the premiere of season four."

Less difficult to lose were Nikki Fernandez (Kiele Sanchez) and Paulo (Rodrigo Santoro), who were buried alive in the middle of the third season. They were introduced at the beginning of the third season because "people asked questions about the other characters on the beach," Cuse said. "Are we ever going to learn anything about them? So we decided to bring Nikki and Paulo out of the chorus. But once we did it, people were angry that we were taking time away from out main characters and giving it to Nikki and Paulo, so we listened to the fans and decided to bury them alive."

The fourth season of Lost starts Feb. 6, 2008. The DVD of the third season hits retailers on Dec. 11.

[Pubrick]

"so we listened to the fans and decided to bury them alive."

if only they could bury Tim Kring alive..

[MacGuffin]

Lost Answers Offered
Source: SciFi Wire

The producers of Lost offered up a few answers behind the mysteries in season three and a few hints about the upcoming fourth season. The third season drops on DVD on Dec. 11.

Executive producer Carlton Cuse admitted that the people who were on the jet that crashed into the island all have to pay a price for being there. "Yes, and that price is $3.95," he kidded. "In seriousness, the show is about redemption. All the characters on this island are confronting the failures of their past and revisiting issues that go to the core of their emotional makeup."

Cuse also 'fessed up about the person in the coffin seen at the very end of season three. Was it someone we've seen before? "Yes," he said without elaboration.

Damon Lindelof, a co-creator and producer, was asked about why the expectations set up for the return of young Walt (Malcolm David Kelley) never seemed to materialize in the third season. Will he be seen again? "Oh, you'll see him again. But you're going to have to be patient. Sorry."

Fans first complained that not enough answers were revealed in the first half of the split-up season, but Cuse said, "We think the balance at the end of the season was right. We see each season of the show like a book. The answers were essential for this book of the show to feel complete."

One of the pressing questions by hardcore fans is how many days the survivors have been on the island. Lindelof said, "By the end of season three, the survivors have still been on the island for less than a hundred days ... but don't forget that you may be jumping into the future next year, so anything goes!"

The space-and-time-travel element was explained when the creators nailed down an end-time for the series. "When ABC/Disney allowed us to end the show in 48 more episodes, it was time to begin a new modality of storytelling, which includes flash-forwards," Cused said. "The show is like a mosaic. There are tiles in the present, in the past and now in the future as well. When all the tiles are in place, the story of Lost will be complete."

The third season seems to push Kate (Evangeline Lilly) and Jack (Matthew Fox) even further apart and more toward Sawyer (Josh Holloway), but the last episode muddied the waters a bit. Cuse teased, "The Jack/Kate/Sawyer triangle is something that will go on for a long time. And who says they don't have a chance?"

The creators don't think of their characters as ambiguous when it comes to good and evil, specifically Ben (Michael Emerson) and Locke (Terry O'Quinn). "We would use the word complex," Cuse said. "We are interested in exploring how good and evil can be embodied in the same characters and the struggles we all have to overcome the dark parts of our souls."

The unveiling of Jacob, the mysterious leader of the Others, didn't necessarily satisfy questions in season three. "If you felt the unveiling of Jacob provided answers, you are probably in the minority! We felt it was important to introduce Jacob as more than just a name at this point, as he will become important downstream," Cuse said. The fourth season of Lost starts Feb. 6.

[MacGuffin]

Season 4 trailer:

[MacGuffin]

'Lost' returns: Half empty or half full?

TV viewers will begin the new year without Jack Bauer, but they will spend at least two months with their favorite castaways.

Soon after the strike began, Fox announced it would indefinitely postpone the midseason premiere of its Emmy-winning drama "24" to protect the integrity of its time-stamped story line.

Today, ABC announced it was moving ahead with plans to air "Lost" but, in a surprise move, will do so in the "Grey's Anatomy" Thursday night time slot, beginning Jan. 31. This is the third time-slot move for "Lost" in four seasons and the first time it will not air on Wednesday nights, even though doing so means possibly cutting the season in two halves and potentially alienating more viewers. 

Both "Lost" and "24" have done better in the ratings when the networks air episodes without interruption in the scheduling. To that end, ABC, in a highly unconventional move in May, announced that "Lost," the series that helped lift the network out of last place, would have three more seasons of 16 uninterrupted episodes each, airing from February to May each year.

The decision came after a tumultuous year for the series, after ABC aired its third season in two parts — six episodes in the fall and 16 in midseason — and the size of its audience declined by 14%. When the show returned in midseason, it picked up momentum, convincing ABC executives that Losties, as the show's fans call themselves, prefer their show to have a straight run.

But the strike has altered those plans. Instead of shelving the series a la "24," ABC is taking the chance of possibly having to air the series in two parts because the producers completed only eight episodes before the strike began. But giving it the slot occupied by "Grey's Anatomy," which has run out of original episodes because of the strike, could give it a boost. "Lost" will also serve as the lead-in for a new ABC drama, "Eli Stone," starring Jonny Lee Miller. 

"Lost" executive producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof could not be reached on Friday. But in an interview last month, Cuse said they both hoped the network would hold out.

"This is a very tough dilemma," Cuse said. "The lesson last year was six episodes was an exercise in frustration. I think eight episodes would only be slightly less so. We hope that when the show airs, all 16 would air consecutively. That's the way we've designed our season and that is our hope."

[MacGuffin]

'Lost' fans: Look out for that cliffhanger!

Okay Losties, here's what "Lost" co-creator Damon Lindelof has to say about the move to Thursday night: It's a boost for the mysterious castaways because it guarantees that they will not have to face off against the "American Idol" machine and it also protects them from going head-to-head with original episodes of "CSI" as long as the strike continues.

"I think it's awesome," Lindelof said. "If they had told us last year we were going to get the 'Grey's Anatomy' time slot, I would have been thrilled, especially since there's no new 'CSI' to go against," he said. "But the time slot is completely colored by the fact that we're still engaged in this writers strike. It's bad for the entire town. The only show you don't want to be up against in January is 'American Idol,' and there were very few time slots that would afford us to not compete with 'Idol.' It's great to not be up against 'Idol' but [it's a shame] that we're not up against 'Idol' because there's a writers strike."

"Lost" performs better in the ratings when the networks air episodes without interruption in the scheduling. Lindelof and Executive Producer Carlton Cuse designed the new season as a 16-episode arc and were hoping the strike would be resolved in time for ABC to be able to air the season without interruption. But with the end of the strike increasingly uncertain, Lindelof said Friday that ABC felt it had no choice but to go ahead.

"What I would not want to do is hold these episodes of 'Lost' indefinitely," he said. "I feel like the fans haven't seen any 'Lost' since the end of May, and I completely understand the network's decision to air these eight episodes. We certainly designed our season as 16 straight and this is not ideal by any stretch of the imagination. But we can't go on strike in one breath and then complain about the fact that the series isn't airing the way we want it to in the other. I believe in the strike and why we're on strike, so that supersedes what my preference is for the ideal way for the show to end."

Because of complaints from fans last year that the show poses more questions than it answers, the writers learned to wrap up their seasons more conclusively, Cuse said. To that end, they designed the first half of the fourth season as set-up and the second as pay-off.

"The audience just needs to be warned," Cuse said. "There's a very cool cliffhanger at the end of the eighth episode. But most of the major questions were designed to get answered at the second half of the season. The whole idea that we're actually looking forward as well as looking back is something we're very excited about as storytellers. But there is a fear that if the strike continues and we're not able to complete the season, that people might feel a little frustrated because those eight episodes aren't conclusive."

[picolas]

S4 bigger better trailer

WE HAVE TO GHO BHAAAAAAACFDKJ

[Pubrick]

alright, it goes without saying but i'm finally venting it: i can't WAIT to see this again. i'm in major LOST withdrawl.

spoilers if you havn't seen the ending of last season and plan to

that bullshit trailer reminded me how amazing kate looked in the last flashforward. and the f*ing PERFECTION of the new structure. maybe it's time i told the story of my near death season finale experience.

my dad spoiled it for me. it's a tradition that me and him hav that we watch lost together. since the beginning. i don't know anyone else who loves it as much as me. and the thing is i dont' think he even gets half the stuff that's going on cos his english isn't perfect. so in explaining some stuff it helps to clear it up in my own mind. the problem was he had taped the episode, and when i was watching it for the first time, it was his second. cut to the last episode of season 3:

the scene on the bridge, jack's in the car and he's making a phone call to someone. he's crying. he says "..ng-hey, i need to see you". his nose is runny cos of the crying, and makes him speak really nasally. THIS IS IMPORTANT. then he gets out and is about to jump and you know the rest. WELL.. at this point, i'm watching it with my old man and i'm thinking out loud as usual. "why the fuck is he crying, who's he calling?? that's quite a beard.." and then at this point we're at Ground Zero Time (GZT) that is the island. and my dad goes "it's cos of her!" referring to KATE. the implication spoils the whole thing, jack and kate did NOT know each other in the past. this was the future.

ok. dudes. as you know, the episode is structured so that we THINK the future stuff is all flashback of a period we havn't seen before, and that the person he's going to meet by the airport is his ex wife, cos she turned up at the hospital and all that. any suspicions are then confirmed in the beeeeautiful moment where kate emerges from the shadows in all her blue porcelain ghostlyness. well my dad had pretty much spoiled the whole thing from the first scene. BUT not cos he had seen the ending and figured it all out then. he thought it was revealed from the start cos when jack said "ng-hey", dad thought he said KATE.

CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT?

well anyway. the greatest possible revelation of any season finale i've ever seen in my entire life was ruined. i would never hav thought it was in the future. dad only realised later that yeah that would be STUPID for them to reveal it in the first scene since the whole episode is structured to blow your mind in the last scene.

i wish i could go back. please tell me the revelation was not as amazing as i imagine it musta been for the unspoiled. because i honestly believe there will never be a greater EVOLUTIONARY MOMENT in television as long as i live. this was the moon landing. and i missed it.

[picolas]

season 3 end spoils

- when it went to jack sitting against the wall at the end, just then i was thinking oh my god this is the future and the brilliance was paralyzing.

...

- easily the best use of the phrase "through the looking glass" since the original.

i basked in its genius despite figuring it out before the show 'wanted' me to, but the whole ep was like a spoiler we were meant to read.

and even if you can't let yourself believe you got the rush of awesomeness there's still three more finales. one of which will be the final finale. but i think you got it. maybe not like FFWSSHWAAA but that's just a momentary thing. you clearly grasp how big it is. "we have to gho bhaaack!" is easily my favourite moment in the show for all the reasons you list/didn't miss.