Fringe Trailer-Pilot Script Details

Fringe is the fourth TV series co-created by J. J. Abrams (Felicity, Alias, Lost)and also his fourth collaboration with co-creators Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman(Alias, Mission Impossible III, Star Trek). It is produced by Bad Robot in association with Warner Bros. Television, and deals with a research scientist named Walter Bishop(who Orci describes as "Frankenstein mixed with Albert Einstein"),his son,and a female FBI agent who brings them back together. The show is being described as a cross between The X-Files, Altered States and The Twilight Zone.Like Abrams' previous TV shows,it will have an overarching mythology.A two-hour, $10,000,000 pilot was produced.Jeff Pinkner will serve as executive producer/showrunner.

Trailer

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Starring
Kirk Acevedo
Tomas Arana
Blair Brown
Joshua Jackson
Jasika Nicole
John Noble
Charlotte Rampling
Lance Reddick
Anna Torv
Mark Valley

First Look at FOX's "Fringe" Pilot Script SPOILER WARNING
www.televisionaryblog.com
October 19,2007

With Fringe, from Warner Bros. Television and Abrams' Bad Robot shingle, the dynamic duo of Kurtzman and Orci have created what can only be described as a millennial take on that seminal FOX series The X-Files, albeit with an added dose of humor and a taut mythology that serves as an undercurrent for this supernatural/crime procedural.

So what's Fringe's pilot script about? Good question. The teaser, in true Lost fashion, opens with a turbulent passenger flight from Hamburg, Germany to Boston. But lest you think that the plane crashes onto a deserted and possibly haunted island in the middle of nowhere, something else just as terrifying occurs. One passenger--referred to in the script as "Troubled"--injects himself with an insulin syringe pen and within seconds, his entire body begins to liquify. The contagion quickly spreads among the entire cabin as both passengers and crew members' bodies begin to melt. The plane itself lands safely at Logan Airport under radio silence. Cut to a cheap hotel where FBI Agent Olivia Warren (think Keri Russell) finishes a tryst with her secret lover and fellow agent, John Scott. They're summoned to the airport to await CDC inspectors as the plane shows no sign of life and the windows are caked in blood.

Pretty ominous, no? Things just get weirder from there. A suspicious exchange between two Middle Eastern men and a white guy out at a storage facility right after the plane landed is called in to the FBI and Olivia and John are sent to investigate. There they discover a lab filled with chemical equipment, canisters of unknown gas, jars of mutated animals and other horror movie detritus. Olivia goes to call for a chemical transport team when John spies a man inside the lab. A man who happens to look just like "Troubled." He gives chase, Troubled pulls out his mobile phone, punches in a few keys and detonates the lab. John is enveloped in a cloud of chemicals while Olivia is thrown backwards by the blast.

When she comes to, she's in the hospital and John is clinging to life. His entire body has become almost crystalline, his skin almost like glass, translucent and diamond-hard. Quickly losing hope that she'll lose the man she loves, Olivia tracks down the only person who could possibly help, a genius scientist named Dr. Walter Bishop (think Patrick Stewart), who engaged in research in the 1970s and 1980s that involved substances similar to that which caused John's condition. One problem: he's been in a mental hospital for the last seventeen years. Second problem: he's not allowed any visitors other than family... and his only family is his estranged son Peter, a genius misfit and nomad currently working in Baghdad. Olivia tracks down Peter, coerces him into helping her (there are some dangerous people looking for him), and gets Walter released. Together, this troika must work together to figure out a way to save John, track down the killer, uncover his link to Bishop's experiments, and prevent this from happening again.

I won't reveal anymore (sorry, spoiler junkies!) but suffice it to say, the above description is only the first two acts of a labyrinthine two-hour pilot. Along the way, there are car chases, explosions, secret cabals, shady mega-corporations, and things extraordinary, inexplicable, and unbelievably cool. As for the title? It refers to Walter Bishop's specialty: Fringe Science. Before his incarceration (there's a mystery there, BTW), Bishop investigated things like teleportation, astral projection, mutation, mind control. Otherwise known as things that conventional science can't explain. But one thing is for sure. Events like what happened aboard that plane in the pilot's opener are happening with a greater frequency and the world's governments have noticed this alarming trend, even coining a term for these anomalies: The Pattern.

I read Fringe's pilot script with a feverish passion, devouring each and every plot twist and turn. This is a hugely ambitious project and smacks of Kevin Reilly's positive influence over FOX: it's intelligent, controversial, and populist at the same time, filled with memorably abrasive characters, gruesome horror, and tongue-in-cheek humor. It's House meets The X-Files with The Twilight Zone and some of the British series Eleventh Hour thrown into the mix.

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