Good Idea or Bad? Looking at various sci fi and fantasy television projects currently in the works and pondering whether they will fly or crash.
What Is It? The 4400 first premiered in 2004 and focused on 4,400 people who had mysteriously disappeared over the prior fifty-plus years and who just as mysteriously reappeared near a lake close to Mount Rainier, Washington. They have no memories of what happened prior to their disappearance and they start to manifest special abilities after they return. The National Threat Assessment Command is assigned to investigate what happened to them and to determine if it is safe to reintegrate them into society.
What Is in the Works? The CW has given a straight-to-series order for a “reimaging” of the property which will come from Ariana Jackson (Riverdale) and Anna Fricke (Being Human). Deadline Hollywood gives the following description of the project:
4400 overlooked, undervalued, or otherwise marginalized people who vanished without a trace over the last hundred years are all returned in an instant, having not aged a day and with no memory of what happened to them. As the government races to analyze the potential threat and contain the story, the 4400 themselves must grapple with the fact that they’ve been returned with a few…upgrades, and the increasing likelihood that they were all brought back now for a specific reason.
Good Idea or Bad? The 4400 debuted on the USA Network shortly before Lost has revitalized sci fi TV on the broadcast networks and at a time when genre entries on television were rather sparse. I recall watching it from the beginning and believing that it had potential, but by the third season I was losing interest and did not stick with the show into its fourth and final year. It did develop a notable following, though, and after it was cancelled on a cliffhanger in 2007, they began lobbying for the show to get at least a final season in order to wrap up its storylines. That fanbase has continued its efforts to this day to get a revival of the show and have an online petition that is active and that has gathered over 90K signatures.
That group will likely not be happy with The CW’s plans as it will be a complete reboot with all-new actors and storylines. And considering the network, the show will almost certainly have plenty of pretty young faces and will deliver a hefty amount of copy-and-paste dialogue and storylines. It actually seems rather odd that they would pick this property to reboot because it was never more than a cult show and does not bring much name recognition. But perhaps Jackson and Fricke are fans of the original and wanted to put their own spin on the story. And since the former has been working on The CW’s successful Riverdale series and the latter just delivered the hit reboot Walker, Texas Ranger, the network is allowing them some leeway.
Since I personally believe the original never really lived up to its potential, I don’t necessarily think that taking a second shot at the premise would be a bad idea. But almost certainly the producers will be putting The CW’s typical youth-skewing spin on the concept, which is not the best way to go. A different creative team and network might deliver a better reboot or picking up with the original characters and see if they could correct some of the mistakes of the first run could be workable as well. But a YA take on the property that will almost certainly not engage the existing fanbase and may not attract enough new viewers sure seems to have this one shaky footing to start off. As they are proceeding, this looks like a bad idea, but perhaps they can beat the odds and turn this into a decent reboot.
Notable Facts: The 4400 premiered in July 2004 and had among its cast Joel Gretsch, Jacqueline McKenzie, Mahershala Ali, Billy Campbell, and Laura Allen. It started out as a five-episode “mini-series” (more like a tryout run) then continued on as a regular series. It had somewhat of an X-Files vibe at first with the characters Tom Baldwin and Diana Skouris as the stand-ins for Mulder and Scully, but it shifted more focus to the various members of the 4400 as the series progressed. The fourth season wrapped up in September 2007 with the show ending on a cliffhanger, and production on a fifth season was stalled because of a writer’s strike that began that year. USA then decided to cancel this show–along with Dead Zone–in part due to declining ratings but also because the network went through a change of direction and lost interest in sci fi properties. The story was carried on in books but did not have a proper resolution even in that format.
Do you think that a reboot of The 4400 is a good idea or bad? Chime in with your comments below.
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The 4400 is even worse than Manifest. But, that’s what you get with a Black remake. Both shows spent too much time trying to develop each character instead of focusing on the ACTION. We viewers don’t care that much about the people just WHAT THEY DO.
They need better writers, everything is soo in your face from recent political and social to the every white person is bad and look at the security in storm trooper colors (nazi party) to the evil white woman who raised the mixed raced child. The cast should have been more diverse (Asian, African American, Hispanic and white) the social message could have been more subtle and spread out over several episodes a little at a time. The Characters development should have been more subtle, I don’t know if the reverend is good or evil but they introduce him like he is going to be the manipulator that type of character would have been more subtle in such a unknown situation until he sized things up a lot more. This over the top writing is why I stopped watching Supergirl. CW needs to hire better writers. Diversity in entertainment is needed and while I have not seen the new Wonder Years the sense i get from previews is that is a step in the right direction with positive messages.
All I have to say is I don’t like the show and I’ll not watch it again.
Ok so I just watched the trailer for the new series and I noticed that it seemed as though the entire cast of the 4400 (the people that were abducted) are African American, which I found strange as the original series was focused more of individuals through recent history that gained powers and acclimate in modern society while unravelling the mysteries of their disappearances. Not to say that there was much diversity in the original series, as I recall there were only two main minority characters and both were removed by the end of the series, but it did not feel like being white was the focus. So I surfed a bit and found this ” 4400 — told from a Black perspective, which, co-showrunner Ariana Jackson says, addresses “our country’s inability to reckon with its history of white supremacy.””
In the words of the Godfather Marlin Brando: “Look at what they did to my boy”
I mean come on, it was a wonderful Sci-fi series and instead of at least trying to make it a Sci-fi epic, it was decided that they once again butcher a beloved show and shove politically correctness down our throats
I will not be watching this, not because of race or sex, but because all I ever wanted from a remake of the original show was that it remain Scifi series with superpowers and a great story that focuses on a story driven mystery, not a lesson on the Evils of American. I mean for God’s sake, I am not even American, have no connection to the country what so ever, and am just looking for something interesting to watch.
If the CW wants to create a series that focuses on bringing minority characters from across the last century to demonstrate the nature of white supremacy in American more power to them, but why butcher a known and beloved series, why not create an entirely new series and make it so the old fans don’t get insanely infuriated at the utter disrespect to the original
I was a fan of the original 4400 series and I have absolutely zero interest in watching the CW destroy the show. There is no reason to remake it.
The Nevers, which debuted on HBO this year is remarkably like The 4400 and has garnered a great deal of attention. Excluding the time period, the similarities are so stark I’m rather surprised Warner Media would approve the project given that they are also part of the production of The 4400 reboot, CW being a joint venture with CBS. In any event the popularity of the Nevers lends some credence that a 4400 reboot could be quite successful now. Giving it a YA focus could help appeal to a younger demographic than the HBO show.
Personally, I tend to loathe reboots; and I can’t imagine a reboot of The 4400 seriously adding anything to the mythos unless they’d dramatically change the story so that it barely resembles the original. Why not, instead, pick up where the series left off, allow the passage of time, and see what the world is like now? Seems more original than retreading paths already taken.