David Goyer, creator of ABC’s SF drama Flash Forward, revealed to SCI FI Wire that he will be directing the one-hour pilot in Los Angeles starting in February and that the show is only loosely based on Robert J. Sawyer’s novel of the same name.

“The basic idea, without giving too much away–because not unlike Lost, … it is a serialized show, and there are a lot of sort of twists and turns–but in the pilot there is an event that happens, and everyone on the planet, 6 billion people, all black out at exactly the same time,” Goyer said in an interview in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Dec. 11, where he was promoting his upcoming horror film The Unborn. “And they black out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds. For the same duration, and wake up at the same time. And so initially there’s a tremendous amount of cataclysm–people that are driving cars and flying planes, things like that. But what you learn in the pilot is it’s not just that they blacked out. The consciousness of the human race actually jumped forward five months for those two minutes. So if five months from now, the two of us were going to be having this conversation, you and I would both remember those two minutes of the conversation. It’s a consistent future.”

The pilot follows a group of characters around the world who have to deal with the consequences of that glimpse into the future, Goyer (The Dark Knight) added. “Having glimpsed that future, what choices do you then make?” he said. “You know, if you’re engaged to be married, but in your flash-forward you see that you’re not married, do you still get married? … It’s all about … how that one glimpse of the future kind of changes the world forever.”

Goyer will be an executive producer and show runner on Flash Forward, which marks his return to television after CBS’ short-lived Threshold.

Like Lost–to which Flash Forward is being envisioned as a companion series–the show will have about a dozen or so main characters. “It’s pretty serialized, yeah,” Goyer said. “We’ve worked out, you know, we definitely know how the first season ends and how the whole show ends and things like that. … The first season will go just one day beyond the five months. So we’ll see by the end of the season sort of did everyone’s kind of glimpse of the future really happen or not, or did some people, in trying to avert their future, cause it to happen? And then we’ll go one day beyond it, and then there’s a big giant cliffhanger that happens which I can’t say, at the end of the first season, which changes everything.”

Goyer added that he and his producing partners–including his Threshold partner Brannon Braga and his wife and producing partner Jessika Borsiczky Goyer–have loosely plotted out about six years’ worth of Flash Forward. “Hopefully we’ll get there,” Goyer said.

Goyer was not concerned that the show will be heavily serialized. “I think it’s just a matter of, if it’s a serialized show, is the writing continuing to be good; does it keep you on the edge of your seat?” he said. “And if it does, I think people will tune in.”

If ABC picks the show up based on the pilot, there may be Internet and other supplementary stories as well, Goyer said. “Funnily enough, we have a big meeting about it on Tuesday,” he said. “We’ve got some ideas. It’s sort of, kind of tailor-made for that. … The glimpse of the future is 2 minutes and 17 seconds, so it opens up some ideas for some interesting webisodes kind of things.”

Flash Forward centers on newly sober Mark Banford (Joseph Fiennes), an FBI agent who is patching up his life and marriage. Sonya Walger will play Mark’s wife, Olivia, who is disturbed by her vision of being in love with another man. Christine Woods will play Janis, a computer-savvy FBI agent who helps to uncover a pivotal clue in the mystery. John Cho will play Dominic Witten, a dedicated FBI agent who is Mark’s partner and friend. His experience while unconscious was an absolute blank, which doesn’t bode well for his own future as he realizes he might be murdered.

SOURCE: SCI FI Wire