Heroes Scoopage

POSTED BY Alex Zalben, 06 October 2007

For those of you not based in the NYC area, every year the New Yorker hosts a festival of panels and events geared toward the literate readership of the magazine. The events always sell out, almost immediately.

This year, the lofty pub deigned to turn its eye towards our little caped friend, the superhero, and set up a panel featuring Jonathan Lethem (Omega the Unknown), Mike Mignola (Hellboy), Grant Morrison (Seaguy and nothing else), and Tim Kring (Heroes).

I was lucky enough to snag a ticket for the panel, and will be putting up a relatively full transcription* on Monday. In the meantime, though, I wanted to give you some cool Heroes scoopage that I've heard nowhere else.

By now, most of you know that Heroes 24 episode season will be followed by a separate series called Heroes: Origins. This anthology show will follow entirely new Heroes, will last six episodes, and the audience can vote to include one of the Heroes into the main storyline.

Some other news that was confirmed by Kring is that each episode will feature a guest director and/or writer, including Kevin Smith and Eli Roth, who will each be writing and directing an episode.

So what's the scoopage already, right? Well...

• In addition to Roth and Smith, Michael Dougherty, John August, and Jeph Loeb will each be writing episodes, with August also taking the directing reigns. Michael Dougherty, of course, is the writer of Superman Returns. John August is the writer of the upcoming Shazam movie. Jeph Loeb, you guys already know.
• Each episode will feature two stories, and are essentially a homage to Rod Serling's Twilight Zone. Meaning each individual story will function like a cautionary tale.

Although I had heard rumors about the first bit, the second is by far the more interesting piece of news... So far, nothing has been known about the structure of the Heroes: Origins episodes, so now we know how these are going to play out. It's an interesting tactic, which has actually upped my interest in the mini-series. We'll see how it all turns out, and look for the full transcript of the New Yorker Fest talk on Monday.

*There's only so fast I can type.