Lost’s Damon Lindelof on Writing the Pilot and Why ABC Killed the Show (But Changed Their Minds)

September 23, 2024 Online Originals For the show’s 20th anniversary, its co-creator unpacks the origins of the pilot’s most memorable moments. Phil Pirrello Listen now Powered by ReadAlong.ai “There was a 48-hour period where we were dead.” That two-day window in early 2004 that Lost cocreator and coshowrunner Damon Lindelof speaks of is all that separated ABC’s popular sci-fi drama from active greenlight to another casualty of development hell. It’s fitting that a show about fate had its own changed once a new network regime discovered there was potential worth exploring in a serialized show that mixed Twilight Zone –esque “mystery box” plots with character-first action. Lost centered on the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815, inbound for Los Angeles from Sydney when their plane crashed on a mysterious island with supernatural tendencies — a place home to the Others, the Hatch and, of course, the Smoke Monster. But 20 years ago, on September 22, 2004, the island was just a place strewn with jet wreckage and second chances. Where a few of those survivors — like dogged spinal surgeon Jack (Matthew Fox), fugitive Kate (Evangeline Lilly), naive but likable Hurley (Jorge Garcia) and estranged spouses Sun (Yunjin Kim) and Jin (Daniel Dae Kim) — could rediscover themselves in their attempt to repair what the crash threatened to tear apart. As crazy as events and plots could get on the show, Lost ’s “constant” was its characters — something Lindelof reiterated when he spoke with the Television Academy for an exclusive interview celebrating the popular series’ 20th anniversary. Below, the executive producer reveals how he and J.J. Abrams came up with the spine of the series following a general meeting, and he reminisces on key scenes from the pilot and what led to the show ultimately being given a second chance. Television Academy: Do you remember where you were when you first saw the final cut of the two-hour pilot episode? Damon Lindelof: Yeah, it would have been in the editing bay with [editor] Mary Jo [Markey], on the Disney lot. I will never intentionally present a mistruth, but memory […]

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