For true LOST casting news we look out at the mainstream; Hollywood Reporter is saying that Elizabeth Mitchell of ER and The Santa Clause 2 & 3 is joining LOST as a possible love interest for Jack. WTF you say? If Kate is making her choice early on, as reported at comic-con, and Jack has a "love" interest, doesn't this indirectly spoil a Kate/Sawyer hook-up? If that aint a Han and Leia hook-up, what is!
Word has it that the LOST experience, originally expected to be a three part story, has been extended to five parts! In part three, the myserious LOST numbers sequence 4 8 15 16 23 42 will be explained in an orientation film hosted by Alvar Hanso himself. Part four will be a twist that will leave LOST fans staggering. And part five apparently leaves the game up to a second season of its own next yeah after LOST goes on hiatus again!
Most shocking is the allegation that the bearded euro in the orientation film unfolding now is in fact mythic LOST mystery man Alvar Hanso. He is a little younger and hairier then the guy from the original film, but that doesn't mean much in the world of tv.
ABC announced it will use The Lost Experience to give fans of LOST a treat. Players of The Lost Experience will have the opportunity to collect clues to decode the mystery behind the set of mysterious numbers that recur on the show.
The numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42 feature prominently in LOST. They were stenciled on the hatch in season one, they were Hurley's winning lottery combination, and they are repeatedly referenced throughout the show in other ways.
"The reward we've always promised from The Lost Experience is information," said Mike Benson, senior vice president of marketing for ABC Entertainment, in a statement. "This additional form of storytelling allows us to engage current and new fans in a genuinely innovative way while delivering the same extraordinary content that Lost provides as a television series."
The Lost Experience is an interactive game spanning the globe that features online and print components.log.
Lost returns to the airwaves in October with an unbroken string of episodes. In November, it will break for 13 weeks, and ABC will run the new Taye Diggs drama Daybreak, after which time Lost will return to finish out the season.
Some of the deleted scenes from the LOST Season Two extras disk have been finding their way around the net in various forms. Also there are some behind the scenes bits from LOST Season Two as well! Obviously, we can't share them with you but in their complete form, but take my word for it they are absolutely AWESOME! In the meantime, for a peek... have a look in our gallery. We have posted some screen shots from the deleted scenes along with some stuff from the "behind the scenes" pieces. All in all it looks like the LOST Season Two DVD set is going to KICK ASS.
If your like me, your having trouble following The LOST experience online ARG. Well, help is on the way. The protagonist of the interactive LOST experience, Rachel Blake, has come to your rescue with a point by point rundown of every last clue she has fed to us through her various identities! Now, if the producers of LOST would only be so kind to do the same for the show?
Rachel Blake's LOST Experience Faq
From across the pond comes news that every LOST fans favorite Scot Desmond is returning for LOST Season Three! Henry Ian Cusick, who plays Desmond on LOST, is married to Annie Wood who artistic director for the Polka Theatre has issued her resignation sighting a move to Hawaii in support of Cusick's continued employment on LOST.
Source -- The Stage
His name is Rodrigo Santoro, and you may not know his name now (unless your a very cultured celluloid freak), but you will soon know him as the latest member of the cast of LOST!
Santoro joins LOST playing a member of Penelope Widmore's team in search of the mysterious island! No word on who rounds out the team of highly skilled adventurers making their way to the mysterious island but one thing is for sure: the two guys seen at the end of season two of LOST may not be among them. Neither was contracted ahead to appear so the lookout was on for someone who could fit the nationality.
Joining Santoro is well known genre actress Natasha Henstridge whose prolonged nudity in the Species films earned her the amorous admiration of sci-fi geeks everywhere! Henstridge's role is not yet known but it is thought that she will be playing one of the beach survivors who will be jockying for control of the fuselage camp now that leadership is at an all time low.
One more regular is yet to be cast! Stay tuned!
The "Lost: Season 3" panel Saturday morning at Comic-Con International in San Diego was absolutely packed. Moderator Karen Idleson opened by asking, "Are you hungry?" Before launching into the first of the panel's "video biscuits."
"Lost Diaries" was the first clip, a preview of the mobile episodes ("mobisodes") coming this fall from Verizon. In the clip, Hurley finds a video camera that still works, and shows it to Kate and Sawyer, just in case they're killed, "or eaten or something."
Next up were a few more surprises form the "Lost" Season 2 DVD bonus materials. There was a new Dharma Initiative training video, detailing the three phases of island work: Observation, Addition and Conclusion
The third clip was a montage of the cast and crew goofing off during the Hurley/Sawyer fight scene.
The last clip was "The Whole Truth," cast members and crew talking about the Jin & Sun arc/relationship.
Idleson then introduced Executive Producer Bryan Burk, Executive Producer Carlton Cues, Executive Producer Damon Lindelof, and actors Daniel Dae Kim (Jin) and Jorge Garcia (Hurley).
Idleson started out by asking, "What's the strangest theory any of you have heard?" Kim responded, "[That] it's all taking place in the dog Vincent's mind." While the strangest Jorge heard was, "Hurley is Claire's baby, grown up."
Idleson then invited fans to come up and ask questions. The first was on the topic of the mythology of the show, and how much is being made up on the fly, how much is a secret plan, and how much the actors know. Garcia first answered for the actors. "We get a script 2-3 days before we start shooting it, and that's when we find out."
Cues explained that there's a mythology, and they've planned out the arc of season 3, but there is flexibility depending on how the characters develop. Lindelof added, that they can "..never ask specifically a mythology question without knowing the answer to it." With the characters, they have the freedom to see where it takes them, but when it comes to mythology like The Others and Dharma Initiative, Cues said, "You need to know what you're doing."
Cues revealed he listens to film scores as he writes, especially those by John Powell. However, Lindelof said, "I get really distracted when I'm hearing music and writing, so I'd love to come up with something wildly cool, but I'm relatively square when it comes to actual process."
Is there any influence on the show from viewer speculation and feedback? According to Cues, it's a thin line to walk. "You can't be influenced too much," said Cues. But fan feedback definitely has an effect on the writing of the show. At the end of Season 1, fans thought there were too many questions, so, they answered a bunch more in the Season 2 finale. Lindelof added they got responses about that finale being, "too mythologically dense," but they've taken that into consideration, because "fans are the barometer."
Fan feedback about last season's almost random schedule actually influenced the network as well, leading to the two "pods" of programming. The first six episodes that air in the fall will almost be a miniseries.
A disappointed fan asked if they were surprised that they didn't get an Emmy nod for Best Drama. Lindelof said, "We were disappointed and a little bit surprised. We're very proud of season 2. Was it a different show than season 1? Absolutely, and season 3 will be different than both." Lindelof also asked why "Battlestar Galactica" was also overlooked by the Emmy's to much applause. "I think that tells you something about what the tastes are," said Lindelof. "We don't write the show to get Emmys, we write it because it's cool and we want you guys to like it."
Asked how many days the series will cover (since the first season was 48 and the second cover 23), Cues explained, "It never came up, but by the end, we're going to cover a lot of history." The weird statue (from the second season finale), is "at least 50 years old, maybe older," and he hinted that the history of the Island may be a lot more extensive than we've dealt with. Lindelof threw out a meaty tease with the line, "You're making a basic assumption that they've been there as long as they think they've been." But he was hushed before he said more. Lindelof promised that by the end of Season 3, "you and they may have a different idea."
A question about the "underwater hatch" brought more cryptic hinting, with Lindelof not denying there was one, and Cues not confirming there is.
A theory that Bernard and Rose (from the Others) work for the Dharma Initiative was met with a resounding "no" from both Lindelof and Cues.
The next question was from a woman identifying herself as Rachel Blake. "Have you no shame?" she asked the assembled producers, "Tell us what you know about the Hanso Foundation!" She claims the training films are real, and that the Hanso Foundation is "a very real, very dangerous organization."
She also mentioned Joop, the 105-year-old Orangutan, Hugh MacIntyre and the Global Welfare Consortium, and asked what "Werner Middelwerk" was doing in Sri Lanka. She finished by asking where Alvar Hanso was. The whole time, Damon was pleading that "Lost" is only a TV show.
Before she was dragged off by security, she shouted a website name: Hansoexposed.com. A video of Rachel's rant at the panel can be found here.
Things were quickly back to normal, with a fan postulating that the Island was, in fact, the Land of Oz from L. Frank Baum's famous novels. Lindelof joked that, "If you play Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' from the beginning of the pilot, just as the O is approaching the screen, it'll completely sync up." But the fan brought up the interesting item that Oz is "an invisible island in the middle of the pacific." Lindelof confirmed that there are Oz references in the show, and that it was an "interesting theory."
The actors were asked if they had their own theories. Kim explained that originally, "We both [he and Jorge] thought it was some alien ant farm, another race or higher being watching us run around and...experiment with each other." These days, Garcia lets fans come up with the theories. The oddest one uses cloning as an explanation for the dead people that have seemingly appeared on the island, like Jack's dad. Lindelof assures us, however, "you will never, ever hear the word clone on 'Lost.'"
A special feature on the Season 2 DVD is a video that has edited together every single insult Sawyer has uttered on "Lost."
The upcoming third season is going to focus more heavily on the scientific than the prior seasons. "Lost" was always conceived as dancing between the supernatural and scientific, and we'll start to see more focus on Jack's background as a spinal surgeon. We may also start to see how Locke's paralysis was cured.
Hurley's time in the mental institution, who he met there, and his interaction with Lily, is definitely going to be woven into the fabric of season 3, according to the producers.
The "Lost Diaries" mobisodes, will be available to download a week after they hit the Verizon phone network. They're hoping to do 13 episodes total and many will probably come out between the two programming pods.
According to Lindelof, Vincent is still on the island. "You'd never get to see his flashbacks if he left," said Lindelof.
Questioned about the use of the word "Namaste," a traditional greeting of blessings, by the Dharma Initiative, Cues explained, "They were good guys," their projects were for "the betterment of humanity." (It's interesting to note that he continually refers to Dharma in the past tense.)
According to Lindelof, "There are at least four, probably five seasons planned out" but there is a defiite end point that all the producers and writers have in mind. "After that, we'd have to start tap dancing." Lindelof and the other producers would prefer the show to end on their own terms, but if it came to the network wanting to keep the show on the air, they would probably all walk, rather than drag it through the dirt. Or zombies.
The literal translation of the five hieroglyphics that appeared when the timer in the Hatch was allowed to count down are the symbol for the Underworld. It's subject to interpretation, but that's the closest translation, according to the producers
Desmond will be back on the show along with some new regulars next season, and Burk confirmed that the final sequence form the second season finale was off-island.
Is the monster a cloud of nanobots? "No, it is not a cloud of nanobots."
The plot of the "Lost" videogame is under wraps, but will follow the spirit of the show.
Asked "When is Sun going to have Michael's baby?" Lindelof said, "Well, going back to the question about how each season takes a couple of days, I'll say Season 13?"
Kate will be get with somebody "soon. Very soon."
Libby's past will be filled in more with flashbacks of other characters.
Series co-creator J.J. Abrams will co-write the premiere of Season 3 and hopefully direct the 7th episode.
Another disappointed fan asked if we'd see more action in Season 3, to which Lindelof replied, "We tell the stories we want to tell at the speed that we want to tell them. 'Lost' was designed as a cult show, and somehow it became a mainstream show. You can't please all of the people all of the time."
Do Jack and Locke's rich fathers, and Libby's rich husband, have anything to do with Dharma? Lindelof could only say, "You're asking the right question, but we're certainly not going to confirm or deny it here."
Asked if there was anything we can look forward to, generally, in season three, the panel threw out a number of events:
* The series will have a vastly different feeling than the last two seasons, a lot more adventure elements.
The show will also be "exploring the Others community." The title of the first episode is going to be, "A Tale of Two Cities."
