Legacy Canceled as Fox Eyes Anthology for Franchises Future

Fox‘s 24: Legacy will not return for a second season — but that doesn’t mean the franchise itself is done.

The network has opted to cancel the rebooted version of the Corey Hawkins-fronted drama after one season. Despite launching in the prime post-Super Bowl slot on Fox, where it averaged 17.6 million viewers and a 6.1 rating among adults 18-49 (down 3 percent vs. last year’s telecast on CBS), the 12-episode series wrapped with 6.3 million total viewers and a 1.7 in the demo — with seven days of DVR.

While 24: Legacy will not be back for a second season, Fox is already talking with 24 producers — including Howard Gordon and Brian Grazer, who are said to be very involved — for a new anthological take on the franchise. Network brass remain confident that 24 will return for a new incarnation that would be built around 24‘s famous real-time storytelling device. It will not, however, be a version of Legacy, meaning stars Hawkins and Jimmy Smits would not be involved. (Female lead Miranda Otto was killed off in the Legacy finale.) The anthology format makes sense for the franchise and would allow for the creation of new storylines and characters in every incarnation.

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24 remains a valuable franchise for Fox; it originally ran for eight seasons before being revived with original star Kiefer Sutherland for event series 24: Live Another Day. Legacy followed that series, but it was built around Hawkins (Straight Outta Compton, The Walking Dead) and told a new story. Sutherland did not return but was credited as an executive producer. For his part, Sutherland’s ABC drama Designated Survivor was renewed for a second season and will return in the fall with its fourth showrunner.

Sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that Gordon flew back to the U.S. in April and early May in an effort to revive 24, with talks said to have included a pitch to save Legacy.

Speaking with THR after the Legacy finale, showrunner Manny Coto acknowledged Fox would have wanted the ratings to be higher and said he was “hopeful” for a second run. “There are ideas [for a second season] that we’ve floated around,” he said. “We all know where we want to take the next season. I could say pretty confidently that it would probably be [the protagonist] Eric [Carter] as a CTU agent, and my guess is it would be in a place that’s not necessarily the U.S. As a young agent, he’s stuck somewhere. He’s not getting the choicest assignments. It might be fun [to focus on] someone in some backwater CTU station who ends up stumbling on a larger plot that could bring down the country. My feeling for next season would be something where the country is at stake in a large way. It involves Jimmy Smits and the country and his presidency. It would hopefully go big, and be more along the lines of Live Another Day, and be larger than life and still explore relationships, like Eric and his wife. Are they still together? Are they not?”

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