“Heroes” Duo Get the Ax
Variety is reporting major news from the Heroes offices this weekend:
Big shakeup on the staff of NBC’s “Heroes” came down on Sunday with the axing of co-exec producers Jesse Alexander and Jeph Loeb.
Both scribe-producers had been with the show since its first season and were known to have led the day-to-day production operation under the direction of creator/exec producer Tim Kring.“Heroes,” produced by Universal Media Studios, has struggled in the ratings its third season. It’s understood that Alexander and Loeb were let go because of Peacock execs’ frustration with the creative direction of the show. The show is also said to have been grappling with hefty budget overruns this season, that are going well beyond its already sizable $4 million per-seg pricetag.
Reps for NBC and UMS declined comment.
From CBR:
Sunday evening, CBR News spoke exclusively with Loeb who said, “As of today, Jesse Alexander and I have left ‘Heroes.’ I’m incredibly proud to have been a big part of the success a show with eight Emmy nods and a win this year for NBC.com. I will miss the superb cast and writing staff and wish everyone the best.”
Loeb has completed writing/producing the fall finale, the last episode of the “Villains” chapter titled “War.”
Alexander commented on the dismissal Sunday evening on his blog. “I write this with a heavy heart. As of today I am no longer a writer/producer on ‘Heroes.’ I could not be prouder of all the work I did on the show and wish all my Heroic Scribbler pals the very best.”
To Mr. Loeb and Mr. Alexander: Thank you for all you did for Heroes it would not be the same had you not been there.
Update: Jesse Alexander wrote of this news in his blog:
I write this with a heavy heart. As of today I am no longer a writer/producer on HEROES. I could not be prouder of all the work I did on the show and wish all my Heroic Scribbler pals the very best. I will certainly continue to blog at GLOBAL COUCH.
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Frank on 3 November 2008 | Want an avatar? Get your free Gravatar!
I cannot say I agree with these firings at all. Jeph wrote and produced all the best Heroes episodes. In my opinion, Tim Kring is the problem. While I think his creating the show is great, he is one of the weak points. He admitedly has never read comics, he creates drama’s, and that’s not *really* what we want. We want superheroes! Jeph and Jesse were two of the best writers of the show because of their involvement with comics, and I think they were let go because of politics, not because of anything they have or have not done.
Frank on 3 November 2008 | Want an avatar? Get your free Gravatar!
Here’s a better way to fix the show:
Make Hiro Future Hiro
Have HRG pick a damn side… have him do something because it’s right, not just to protect his family.
KILL MOHINDER!
KILL ANDO!
Someone kick Nathan Petrelli’s ass into doing something productive. get him behind a desk and have him start working his way up to the top while somehow introducing the world to those with abilities.
Sylar being on the good side is good.
Get back to Primatech finding and tagging those with abilities.
No one cares about Pinehearst. As bad ass as Arthur is, we still need to know what the hell he’s doing. What’s his plan?
Thin down the cast some more.
Quit pussy-footing around with Ali’s characters.
Albamapie on 3 November 2008 | Want an avatar? Get your free Gravatar!
I do feel they’re being used as scapegoats
Albamapie on 3 November 2008 | Want an avatar? Get your free Gravatar!
At the end of it all, it definetly will not be just them that were to blame for the bad ratings. It’s mostly to do with the day that got chosen and the other shows on that day.
sdlaw on 3 November 2008 | Want an avatar? Get your free Gravatar!
While there are a myriad of reasons why the show is suffering, I do think the shakeup will be good. Loeb was losing focus and from what I heard from Comic-con, kind of a jerk to fans. The writing was getting stale and maybe Alexander was a big part of the writing so he was the one to go. This will accomplish two things, 1) put fresh minds to work on the show and 2) motivate the remaining staff to step up. It is not easy to keep things fresh for multiple seasons without some writing changes.
sdlaw on 3 November 2008 | Want an avatar? Get your free Gravatar!
Oh, and Frank, I respectfully disagree with you. While I love the “comic book” approach you advocate, I think that fans like you and I are still watching the show. The problem is that the critics and the people who are complaining the most are the ones that don’t want the comic book type stories but rather want more action and simple, easy to understand stories. The critics blame “too many characters” and “hard to follow story lines involving time travel” as some of the major points against Heroes and neither of those would be problematic in a comic book universe. If Heroes wants the ratings, they need to synthesize the storylines, minimize time travel, and sex things up even more than they are starting to. (not just sexually but all the character relations need to be more passionate.) It is hard for people to understand the storylines for many reasons including that we missed half a season which would have explained much of the plot holes. This season has been action packed but I think the problem is it is too much like a comic in that the story lines are very sketchy and the watcher is relied upon to get things that may not be easily understood. In a comic book, that is necessary because you only have a small amount of pages. People aren’t used to that in a television show. Look at Smallville. It is successful because it doesn’t superfically touch the character relationships but rather spends each episode on one story. Heroes tries to do four stories in one episode, sometimes more.
Season 1 worked because it was centralized around character development yet had one common target uniting all the characters, Syler. Thus the episodes didn’t feel like many different episodes but more like several different character views of one event. Season two didn’t work as well because Hiro was back in time, Peter was in England and there were new characters like Maya and her brother who simply were not likeable. Further, it was never truly explained why Syler was in Mexico. Season three is trying to regain some of Season 1’s focus but it still has unlikeable characters and new characters which have not received a lot of chance to be likeable. Daphne starts off as a thief and now all of a sudden is caught up in the Pinehearst net without much explanation of why she is working for them. Then she gets a soft spot for Matt even though she doesn’t know him and he seems to be stalking her. These are things the writers need to fix if they want to keep the viewers.
Serena on 3 November 2008 | Want an avatar? Get your free Gravatar!
I just hope this is not true… They’re just getting the ideas from their creator, Tim Kring…
sdlaw on 3 November 2008 | Want an avatar? Get your free Gravatar!
Yes, but the idea may be good but the implementation poor. Or maybe they didn’t see eye to eye
flyboynathan on 3 November 2008 | Want an avatar? Get your free Gravatar!
So, NBC has already signed ONE replacement writer: BSG writer Mark Verheiden. Directly from his blog in the sidebar: Mark is currently Writer/Consulting Producer on the NBC/Universal show HEROES
BSG is a superbly written show, so hopefully this means Heroes will get even better than it is now.
flyboynathan on 3 November 2008 | Want an avatar? Get your free Gravatar!
And here’s the blog url: http://verheiden.blogspot.com/
Serena on 3 November 2008 | Want an avatar? Get your free Gravatar!
Patrick- do you have the source to that?