Lost’s Mark Pellegrino And Henry Ian Cusick Land Sci-Fi Pilots

By Brent McKnight | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

Pilot season is in full swing as networks scramble to fill up the empty slots in their upcoming schedules with quality programs that will push boundaries of creativity and the form as a whole. Okay, that was a sad attempt to be funny. What they really care most about is finding shows that people will watch: good or bad they don’t really care as long as there are butts on the couch.

What better way to get people to watch a show than to remake one that audiences have already watched in the past, or to insert familiar faces that fans already know and love in an attempt to draw in viewers? Which is exactly what the CW is looking to do by casting Lost alums Mark Pellegrino and Henry Ian Cusick in a pair sci-fi themed pilots.

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The Tomorrow People is based on the cult British series that begin in the early 1970s, and which has undergone a handful of revivals already. The show follows a group of young people who ostensibly embody the next stage of human evolution. Known as homo superior, informally called Tomorrow People—a term taken from a David Bowie song—they manifest special powers between childhood and adolescence. These powers include teleportation, telekinesis, telepathy, and more. Naturally, they join together to fight the forces of evil and darkness.

Pellegrino will play an evolutionary biologist named Dr. Jedikiah Price. Price believes that the Tomorrow People pose a great danger to the safety of the human race, so he takes measures to stop them.

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The Hundred is an adaptation of Kass Morgan’s Alloy books. Set nearly a century after nuclear war has ravaged civilization, the human survivors live in a space station called the Ark. The powers that be send 100 juvenile offenders back to the surface of the planet to explore the possibility of re-colonizing the rock. This feels somewhat similar in theme to two upcoming sci-fi movies: Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium and M. Night Shyamalan’s After Earth.

Cusick is slated to play Kane, an Ark officer. He has ambitions galore, so crushing those who get in his way gives him no pause, and his end game is the big chair, the head Chancellor’s job.

We’ll bring you more on The Tomorrow People and The Hundred as we learn it.