Adrian Stephens's Blog - Posts Tagged "reboot"

In August 2011, I wrote about how the makers of the television series Heroes should reboot the franchise, bringing back the original cast.

You can read that post here. The concept is not one normally taken with a reboot. Usually, when a franchise is rebooted, the makers pretend the original never happened. They begin with a new story, new cast and sometimes, new characters.

What I proposed was that NBC take the franchise back to the first episode, with the same cast and characters. The first episode would remain the same, and each episode thereafter would be a little different from the original. By the end of the first season, it would have its own identity.

Let's face it, the original Heroes concept was fantastic. It was an original take on the hero genre, and it had a lot of promise. The problem was that it got too fancy, too fast, and it went in a direction that left many tuning out. So, by rebooting the franchise, keeping the origin episode intact, the series could veer in a new direction all its own. Kind of like following an alternate timeline, if you will.

While that idea spawned from a conversation a friend and I had over lunch, neither of us dreamed it would ever come true. Until now.

In February 2014, NBC aired a teaser trailer for a new mini-series, Heroes Reborn . Since that time, everyone seems to be hypothesizing as to what exactly a Heroes reboot could mean. NBC has announced that some of the existing characters will return, but that is pretty much the extent of what they have released. Though we've learned that Hayden Panettiere is not expected to return, the question remains whether other cast members such as Milo Ventimiglia, Masi Oka, Zachary Quinto, Adrian Pasdar and Ali Larter, to name a few, will be recast in their original roles.

I think many fans are hoping as I am that "Reborn" infers they will be going back to the origin to tell the story from the beginning, but with the intent to take it in a different direction.

In 2015, the questions will be answered. An idea that spawned from lunch with a friend four years earlier may actually come to life. Until that time, we'll just have to hope. NBC may not have heard my plea, but somebody had their ear. One thing is for sure...when it airs, Heroes Reborn will have my attention.

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