Kiefer Sutherland spent a long time repeatedly saying he was done for good with Jack Bauer and 24, but the actor has softened his stance significantly over the last couple of years.
Limited series Live Another Day left the door wide open for the iconic counter-terrorist agent to return to our screens one day, and we also happen to be living in the age of the reboot and revival. Sutherland most recently teased that Jack’s story remained unresolved, admitting he’d be open to the idea of shouting “DAMMIT!” a few more times if the story was to his satisfaction.
Despite being an executive producer for 24‘s entire run and directing multiple episodes, though, Jon Cassar somewhat surprisingly revealed to ScreenRant that he’d probably be the last to know if the high concept episodic action thriller was being dusted off.
“They’ve been talking about it for years, it’s a tough one. It’s how do you come back and how do you come up with another story? I know they’ve tried many times, I’ve seen many scripts of different versions. There was even a movie version, there was one version that was supposed to be — the last Die Hard you saw was supposed to be a 24 and John McClane crossover. Everything has been thrown at the wall to see if they can come up with anything, but no one’s really come up with enough of a story to make it happen. And then, it’s the appetite of Fox, who owns it, so it’s going to be them.
If they get Kiefer back, I just did Kiefer’s new show Rabbit Hole, which is kind of exciting, it’s a new show for Paramount Plus, I believe, so I just did an episode of that up in Toronto. He’s got other projects going and then he’s got his touring, so that’s a tough one to work around. Because when he does his European tours, he’s gone for months, so there’s a lot of factors. It could happen, it’d be great if it happened, everyone’s always asking me and it’s like, ‘I’ll know when you know, quite honestly, I’m the last guy that knows.’ The whole thing happens and then they call me and say, ‘Do you want to direct it?’ So I’m gonna know the same time you do, you’ll probably know before me.”
The ball remains firmly in Sutherland’s court, then, but given how he’s gradually beginning to embrace the idea of bringing Jack back once again, there’s a decent possibility that more 24 could be coming down the pipeline eventually.