Advanced buzz already touts Flash Forward as the successor to Lost’s throne. As Lost ends its story this year, Flash Forward begins a new TV obsession. The entire world blacks out for about two minutes and sees a vision of themselves on April 29, six months from now. Is that their inevitable future or can they change it? David S. Goyer co-created and produces the show and talked about his plans for the first and future seasons over the summer.
Crave Online: Why is it important to even have a reason for the blackouts? Can’t it just be the given of the show?
David S. Goyer: I guess I can’t answer that at this moment. I just think it’s important for the fans to not just be making it up as we’re going along.
Crave Online: Once the event happens, all the characters start handling it and there’s not much time spent having to convince people it’s real. Is that part of your genre influence, dealing with characters who already get it?
David S. Goyer: See episode two. That’s the subtext of episode two. I mean, look, that's the razor's edge that the show traffics in, but the thing that we say to the actors all the time, and we talk about this in episode 2, in episode 3, in episode 4, and onward. It's not like these characters were watching a movie. They had a sensory experience of what happened. So whatever they saw, if they were cold, if they were hot, whatever they heard, whatever they were emotionally feeling was real to them. So when Olivia comes back from that moment, she had genuine feelings of love for this other man, and yet she can't escape it. It was real. And the same for Joe when he's drinking. I mean, he's been sober for seven years, but he had that physiological feeling. I think that's the more interesting aspect of the show, honestly. I mean, I think that the kind of mayhem or the high jinks is cool, but what I'm hoping people will really tune in for is the kind of meat and potatoes of just how people are wrestling with all of these things and the gamut of human experience in John Cho.
Crave Online: While you’re working on this show, has there been any momentum on another Batman?
David S. Goyer: Can’t say anything about that.
Crave Online: What about your schedule with the show and films you’re working on?
David S. Goyer: No, can’t say.
Crave Online: Are you worried that casting Seth MacFarlane might break the reality of the show?
David S. Goyer: No. I don't think so. I think it’s fun. We’re not always going to do comedic bits with him also. Seth is a friend of Brannon's. I think Brannon was just idly talking about it and saying, "Hey, do you want to come down and do a part?" We were friends of Seth's, and we just thought it would be fun to do it. So he'll be popping in and out now and then. He's a great guy. We've done more with him.
Crave Online: What’s the significant of the Tigers game?
David S. Goyer: We didn’t say it was Tigers. We said Detroit. You’ll know by the end of the season.
Crave Online: Can you learn from any of the mistakes that Damon Lindelof himself admits early on in Lost?
David S. Goyer: Well, I don't know that the lessons of Lost are really necessarily applicable to our show. And I mean, it's kind of impossible to predict, we're not on the air yet, whether or not there have been or will be any missed steps. We're trying our best.
Crave Online: You’ve got some of his actors though like Dominic Monaghan.
David S. Goyer: I will say it was a really interesting meeting. You know, we were fans, obviously, of Lost and of Dom, but he signed on without any kind of script, without any scenes written for his character. So he took an enormous leap of faith, but it just so happened, I said, "Yeah, let's start from a place of what do you want to play in an ideal world?" And he told us, and I said, "Interesting enough, we have a character we're going to introduce in a few episodes that kind of hits that sweet spot." So there you go.
Crave Online: What makes everyone believe so quickly that they’re all seeing the future?
David S. Goyer: Well, you pose an interesting question, and that debate will continue on for quite a while, at least for sort of the first act of the first season, and we pick up that debate in episode two. But, just by way of example, say there's 200 or 250 people. If we were in Flash Forward world, all 250 people would remember this moment. So there's something disconcerting about that. It's kind of hard to ignore something like that, and there were definitely a lot of instances where people were in a highly populated area and all recall down to every single detail, the exact same thing happening. But that debate is very much something we traffic in throughout the first season.
Crave Online: Can you tell us any more about the kangaroo?
David S. Goyer: The kangaroo will be back, yes, more than once. I'm not sure what I can say. Look, a kangaroo is a thing. People like the kangaroo. I heart marsupials. Look, I came up with this idea. I said I want a kangaroo on Broadway, and my line producer was like, "What?" “No, no, no. Let's put the kangaroo in.” He was like, "Can't we just…" It was expensive. Here's the deal. The trainers say it's not like training a dog. It's very hard to make a kangaroo to do what you want, as we learned much to our dismay and went into many hours of overtime on Broadway with that kangaroo. And so when I announced that the kangaroo was coming back in episode 6, you could hear this sort of collective groan come up from the production office because it was like, "Oh, man, here we go."
