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'Heroes: Origins' spinoff Announced, will air during 'Heroes' Hiatuses Next Season

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Memles

Member
Variety has NBC's fall schedule, and while we'll discuss the rest in the Upfront thread I figured this would get some more attention here:

"Heroes: Origins" will air in "Heroes'" Monday night time slot when that smash hit takes a hiatus. The net has ordered six segs of "Origins," which, combined with "Heroes," makes for 30 hours altogether.

"Heroes: Origins" will center on characters not yet seen on the original show. Peacock has also added an interactive element to the show: Viewers will be asked to pick their favorite character from "Origins," who will then join the cast of the full-blown "Heroes" skein the following year.

More info from Zap2it:

The "Origins" series will consist of six stand-alone episodes, with each one introducing a new character and telling his or her back story. They'll take place within the "Heroes" universe but won't be tied into the main arc of the series, although one or two regular characters may pop up.

It will also carry an interactive element: After all six "Origins" episodes air, viewers will be able to vote on which character joins the main show the following season.

The idea for "Origins" springs from positive fan reaction to several side characters introduced this season -- Reilly cites Charlie (Jayma Mays), the waitress with the perfect memory, as an example -- and a desire to avoid momentum-draining breaks like the one the show took earlier this spring.

"I don't think the audience minds taking a week off, particularly during the holidays," Reilly says. "It's just the long hiatuses or weeks worth of repeats where we get in trouble."

Just how the "Origins" episodes will be scheduled along with the main "Heroes" storyline has yet to be worked out. The most likely scenario, Reilly says, will be to have "Heroes" start its second season in the fall and run more or less straight through its 24 episodes, with perhaps a short break during the holidays. "Origins" would then follow at the end of the season. Another option would be to run "Origins" "as a chunk" in the spring, before the concluding episodes of "Heroes."

"I'll tell you one thing you won't see is 'Origins' peppered throughout," he says. "I think that would be difficult for the audience to navigate."
 

koam

Member
I'm a little confused.. is heroes not starting again in sept but starting later than sept? When's origins airing? Summer?
 

Holtz

Member
koam said:
I'm a little confused.. is heroes not starting again in sept but starting later than sept? When's origins airing? Summer?
Heroes will start at the same time it started last year, but when it hits the hiatus from february to april next year, Origins will take over the time slot. More Heroes=very good thing. :D
 
D

Deleted member 1235

Unconfirmed Member
I love heroes it's my favourite show.

This sounds like the beginning of a devastating shark jump to me.
 

GCQuinton

Member
koam said:
I'm a little confused.. is heroes not starting again in sept but starting later than sept? When's origins airing? Summer?

From what it sounds like, Heroes is still going to air as planned but instead of going to reruns once it goes on the usual break period, this would air instead. Pretty good idea in my eyes, and you involve the community since their favorite will be added to the main series. It might also help people new to the series to get into it as well. I just hope they have a plan for each of the characters once they do and aren't just winging it when it happens, though.
 

Wes

venison crêpe
Solo said:
I dunno. I always hate whoring out of franchises like this. It often just hurts the original entity. We'll see though.

I like the concept of the viewers being able to choose which Hero we want to be in the main series from this spin-off.

I'm naturally wary of spinoffs as a genre, they rarely seem to bring anything new to the screen (which is why I think the Grey's Anatomy spinoff will crash and burn mid first season), but they're being clever here and utilising the fact Heroes has such an astonishingly large fanbase after one year and including this voting idea.

Could work don't you think?
 

Holtz

Member
catfish said:
I love heroes it's my favourite show.

This sounds like the beginning of a devastating shark jump to me.
How is his a shark jump? Instead of reruns, we get a spin-off about Heroes. If you don't like it, you can pretend it doesn't even exist and just watch Heroes. Then in the third season you will just get a new Hero you never saw before.
 

Ashodin

Member
Sounds like it's going to be about Grandma Petrelli and Linderman and them in their own supergroup before breaking up into what they are now. That'll be fun to see.
 

Solo

Member
It could, yes. I just find that the majority of time, when a film series or a TV show or even a game series starts branching out like this, they often lose focus on the main attraction.
 

Memles

Member
My initial reaction (I need to think about this further) is that as an idea it isn't bad. My initial reading of it (I was skimming/transcribing my own blog post) was that it would be a prequel series that would basically serve as the web comics do now, filling in some gaps of old characters and side characters. I thought that would be pretty cool.

This, however, smells of pure gimmick, and I very much hate the idea of fans voting to control next season. The producers shouldn't have to worry about viewer stupidity when planning storylines.
 

Triumph

Banned
Maxrpg said:
Sounds like it's going to be about Grandma Petrelli and Linderman and them in their own supergroup before breaking up into what they are now. That'll be fun to see.
...not really. They said they'll be focusing on new heroes and the one that gets the most votes or whatever will be added to the regular show.
 
I'm kinda skeptical, but I'll give it a shot. The whole "call in and vote" thing sort of rubs me the wrong way. I guess I'm fearful of over saturation (Heroes + Comic books online + Origins), but for the moment more Heroes is a good thing...
 

Meier

Member
Sounds good to me. Not sure why anyone would assume this will be second rate or have a lesser budget than Heroes proper or anything of that nature. Sounds like a sweeps event -- I don't expect any sort of drop off in quality.
 

Memles

Member
The thing is that this isn't going to be some sort of high-action drama. If anything, I expect that we'll get stories more similar to early this season as people discover their powers, use them, are hunted down by Primatech, etc. I actually think that it's a neat way to be able to get some cheap-ish drama out of the series even as it goes into more expensive sci-fi territory...I just don't know how well it will hold up, and whether action-hungry fans will embrace it.

Meier, it will have a smaller budget. Without big-name stars, most likely, it is basically going to be shot on a shoestring. They wouldn't budget 30 full-fledge episodes of Heroes, it would bankrupt them.
 
I just don't like the whole premise of fan-voting which sounds like "these characters are not as good as those in Heroes, but we'll let you decide which is the best one and we'll plug him/her into the main show." hmmmmm.
 

Rorschach

Member
Making them part of the regular plot could be detrimental to the show, but other than that I see nothing wrong with it. They could be the equivalent of spinoff one shots in comics.
 
Well, as beeman said, they need the break to shoot more episodes...

as the shareholders are probably saying..."This better work Kring!"
 

Meier

Member
Memles said:
Meier, it will have a smaller budget. Without big-name stars, most likely, it is basically going to be shot on a shoestring. They wouldn't budget 30 full-fledge episodes of Heroes, it would bankrupt them.

Heroes didnt have a single big name star -- it had a few lesser ones, but had nothing to pull in viewers other than its premise. I think people are being a bit short-sighted if they think NBC is going to risk jeopardizing the quality of the show with this unless they feel it will be up to snuff.
 
Sounds good to me. Six episodes during the hiatus that will (hopefully) flesh out some of the Heroes history. The fan voting thing doesn't sit too well with me either, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
 
I just don't want to hear, "Tune in next week and find out who YOU voted to join the next episode of Heroes...."
That would be pretty jump-the-shark-esque.
 

Memles

Member
Meier said:
Heroes didnt have a single big name star -- it had a few lesser ones, but had nothing to pull in viewers other than its premise. I think people are being a bit short-sighted if they think NBC is going to risk jeopardizing the quality of the show with this unless they feel it will be up to snuff.

But it is not the quality of THE show. I don't doubt that it will be up to snuff, but it will involve less action, less elaborate sets, etc.

And I'd argue that Milo/Ali Larter/Pasdaire/Hayden are all big enough stars that Heroes' cast budget will be much higher than a low-rate version of it.

This is a budget saving move: if they wanted to have 30 high-class weeks, they wouldn't have bothered with it.
 

Meier

Member
Memles said:
And I'd argue that Milo/Ali Larter/Pasdaire/Hayden are all big enough stars that Heroes' cast budget will be much higher than a low-rate version of it.

They'll naturally be compensated for the success of season 1 with a pay raise, but that doesn't mean they were given much going into it. The "second team" of Origins could command as much as the 1st team did in the 1st season I imagine (if not a bit more as it's guaranteed success).
 

fallengorn

Bitches love smiley faces
Doesn't sound that bad to me. The worst that could happen is all the Origins characters are about as appealing as Nikki/Jessica during the beginning of the season.
 

Ghost

Chili Con Carnage!
So they are gonna show a bunch of new heroes and their origin stories then we're gonna get to pick the best one to join the full cast?!

HOLY SHIT ITS AMERICAN IDOL FOR COMIC BOOK NERDS!


$10 says the hottest legal piece of ass wins.
 
I don't think it's necessarily a budget saving move. Well, maybe in the sense that if they might have to pay the actors a lot more money to film an additional six episodes, if they could get them to agree to do it.

I'm really hoping that they don't skimp on the show's budget. Other than that, I'm not too worried about them spreading themselves too thin creatively, as I'm sure Origins will have separate writers, directers, etc. with Kring and Co. overseeing production.
 
this makes me think two things. First, where is the official thread for the show tonight? and Second, this could be good but I won't be convinced until I see some previews/the first episode. too much American Idol: heroes edition could be a killer. It could also potentially confuse people who think the six episodes are part of S2 instead of a spin-off.
 

Shouta

Member
White Man said:
30 episodes is a ton for one season. They're risking spreading themselves thin.

Sounds like Origins will be totally separate from the main Heroes story. Whoever is the most popular from the Origins episodes will make the leap into the main Heroes series the following year. So even with 30 episodes, it'll probably be the same as this season because the Origin stuff is standalone.
 

White Man

Member
Shouta said:
Sounds like Origins will be totally separate from the main Heroes story. Whoever is the most popular from the Origins episodes will make the leap into the main Heroes series the following year. So even with 30 episodes, it'll probably be the same as this season because the Origin stuff is standalone.

I'm talking about the writing being stretched thin. I'm assuming the two projects share at least some of the same writers (and staff in general).
 

BobLoblaw

Banned
Screw the new characters. I want Claude back damnit. For those of you that forgot, that's the invisible guy. He was the only character on the show that seemed "realistic" in my opinion. Plus he threw Peter off a building. How can he not have been in more episodes?
 

Shouta

Member
White Man said:
I'm talking about the writing being stretched thin. I'm assuming the two projects share at least some of the same writers (and staff in general).

I don't know if that'll be the case because of the nature of Origins but we'll see when it comes around.
 

pnjtony

Member
I'm sure when they were creating the show they came up with pages and pages of different characters. The origins I'm sure will be compartmentalized. I doubt they'll have any of the regulars that Heroes has. They might have Chandra Suresh and maybe Bennet's boss.

I look forward to it.
 

Mission

Member
I think Origins make a lot of sense. How many GAFers were complaining about the speed of the parts which gave us backstory on the main characters? Now that they have switched toward action it could suck for them to suddenly spend weeks introducing new characters again.
 

Memles

Member
Mission said:
I think Origins make a lot of sense. How many GAFers were complaining about the speed of the parts which gave us backstory on the main characters? Now that they have switched toward action it could suck for them to suddenly spend weeks introducing new characters again.

Yeah no. Sorry. Heroes is a serial drama. Heroes cannot be all action all the time, and it is going to have to stop and give us backstory on its main characters at various point in order to remain dramatically viable. "Company Man", which was all about back story, is perhaps the best constructed hour of television this year entirely because of its back story grounding it in real development.

Heroes would be an absolutely terrible show if not for these character moments. They will be dialing back from action, which might turn off the "OMGWTF HEROES KICKS ASS BANG BANG" epileptics, but it's for the best.
 

GDJustin

stuck my tongue deep inside Atlus' cookies
I can't believe so many of you seem to be against this idea. The "origin" stories are the best part of the show. People discovering these abilities they have is the highest order of drama/entertainment in Heroes...
 
Solo said:
I dunno. I always hate whoring out of franchises like this. It often just hurts the original entity. We'll see though.


yea that is exactly the vibe i am getting with this idea.....i mean really getting the fan to decide which character to add?

that tells me the writers are getting lazy.
 
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