After six seasons as Prince Charming on Once Upon a Time, Josh Dallas has just signed on for a role in a new show that sounds pretty crazy. Dallas will be starring in Manifest, a missing plane mystery that might remind people a bit of Lost.
The pilot for Manifest, which has been ordered by NBC, will see Josh Dallas as the male lead, Ben Stone. Ben is your typical type-A father who also works in intelligence as an analyst and has been known to struggle when confronted with things he can't control, like his young son's rare cancer and the mystifying voice he now hears in his head. Manifest, from Jeff Rake (The Mysteries of Laura) and Robert Zemeckis, will focus on a plane full of passengers which disappears from all radar readings and then pops back up a whopping five years later, after it was completely untraceable and presumed lost at sea. To those on the newly returned flight, no time has passed at all, and the drama will look into the personal lives of the passengers as well as the larger mystery of their disappearance and their ultimate destiny.
Whenever we start talking about missing airplanes and passengers, mysteries and destiny, it's hard not to think about Lost, which is the greatest (and messiest) missing airplane TV drama of all time. One thing Manifest has going for it that will help the show set itself apart from Lost, is the fact that these people actually get home and then have to deal with the five years that have gone by in their absence, how it affected their loved ones and how to move on while, presumably, trying to figure out what the hell happened to them and why. It should make for an interesting dynamic we never really got to see on Lost, since the destiny of those passengers was basically to end up together.
Of course, after playing Prince Charming for so long on Once Upon a Time, Josh Dallas is used to working through mysteries and crazy twists. Once you've been cursed a few dozen times by various wicked witches and spent 28 years in a coma, it would seem that a little missing time like five years wouldn't feel insurmountable at all.
According to Deadline, Manifest will be written by Rake and directed by David Frankel, who will both executive produce the project alongside Zemeckis, and will also star Melissa Roxburgh (Valor). Since a pilot is the only thing that's been ordered right now, we don't know yet if the drama will end up on the small screen anytime soon, but stay tuned to CinemaBlend and we'll keep you up to date as details on the show become available. In the meantime, be sure to check out our midseason premiere guide to see what you can watch in the coming weeks.
