DEADLINE: What about 24‘s comeback as an event series at Fox? How did that come about?
GRAZER: The way it came about was Howard (Gordon), Kiefer (Sutherland) and I had been working on making 24 into a movie. We stayed on it but it never materialized in a movie form over concerns about moving the character of Jack Bauer so far outside of the original concept because of how much we loved the series. Meanwhile, Howard had a conversation with (Fox’s) Peter Rice, then they spoke with Kiefer, and, with help from (Fox’s) Kevin Reilly and (20th’s) Dana Walden, the project materialized as a 12-part event series for Fox. A lot of it was the unified synergy that lives inside News Corp that made this happen. And we were lucky that Kiefer wanted to do it because he does the role so well; he is on top of his game playing that character, a character that does things we all would love to do too but rules prevent us from doing.DEADLINE: 24 introduced binge viewing before it even existed. What do you think about the changing viewing habits?
GRAZER: There is evidence that people do want to watch shows back to back — that’s why DVR use is so high. When you’re able to DVR something, people will watch more than one episode. This is natural for us as 24 was one of those shows where people waited for the DVD set to watch it. The spirit of the way people watched 24 seems to have caught on with the viewing habits on other shows. And serialized television is now more popular than it was when we launched 24.