Heroes lives! Or it's technically being "reborn" in the form of an event series. NBC made the official announcement this weekend, releasing a brief teaser that revives the eclipse imagery used for Tim Kring's 2006 drama. NBC says Heroes Reborn will be an event miniseries and they're looking to get it on the air in 2015.
Heroes debuted in Fall 2006 and centered on ordinary people around the world discovering they had superhuman abilities. As the first season played out, the characters' stories began to intertwine with world-changing consequences, and a dark villain named Sylar began targeting them. The last we heard about the series' chances of a revival before this announcement was probably April of last year when there was talk of it possibly coming back as an Xbox series, but it looks like it'll be NBC making it happen.
NBC says Heroes Reborn will consist of 13 episodes and a new stand-alone story arc. Details about the story lines and characters are being kept under wraps, but hopefully that information will begin to surface as we start to hear casting news about this project. In fact, NBC says the series will be "shrouded in secrecy" until we get closer to air. Here's the statement from NBC's Jennifer Salke:
“The enormous impact ‘Heroes’ had on the television landscape when it first launched in 2006 was eye-opening. Shows with that kind of resonance don’t come around often and we thought it was time for another installment. We’re thrilled that visionary creator Tim Kring was as excited about jumping back into this show as we were and we look forward to all the new textures and layers Tim plans to add to his original concept. Until we get closer to air in 2015, the show will be appropriately shrouded in secrecy, but we won’t rule out the possibility of some of the show’s original cast members popping back in.”
As someone who was among the fans who fell in love with the original series when it first premiered and then began to fall out of love with it somewhere between the second half of the first season and Season 2, I'm admittedly looking at this news a bit warily. But the optimist in me thinks that Heroes always had a great concept. It just veered too far off course after the "Save the Cheerleader..." arc played out to keep me interested. With that in mind, it may be much better suited for an event miniseries, as a 13-episode set-up would hopefully offer it just enough time to build up the story and the momentum and then conclude it in some satisfying way. Ideally. We'll see. I like that they're going with a new story.
NBC says they're planning on launching a digital series ahead of Heroes Reborn's 2015 premiere that will introduce the characters and new storylines. And the network also reminds us that Heroes remains one of the best-selling TV series on DVD of all time with more than 10 million units sold.
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