Published: Thursday, 30th July, 2009 10:37am

Jack Bauer to take on Ahmadinejad... Almost.

by Geek Chic

Forget making your Twitter avatar green in solidarity with Iranian dissidents, they have a new protector - in the new season of 24, Jack Bauer will be taking on President Ahmadinejad.

Actor Kiefer Sutherland let slip the premise at San Diego Comic Con, where cast and creators of 24 were doing a Q&A session about the new season of the show, Day 8, which is due to start early in 2010.

"One of us is bound to spill the beans between now and January, so we might as well announce it here," he said. "If last season was about redemption, the theme of this season is peace both for Jack and more widely. The threat centres around a peace conference at the UN, held between the president of the US and Iran. It was written long before the Iranian election, but as always our writers thematically seem so in tune with what's happening in the world. The aim is peace, something that we all hope will happen."

Then, to cheers from the 6,000 fans in the room, he added: "Don't be alarmed though, we do still blow s*** up."

Sutherland also addressed long-standing rumours about Jack Bauer taking on Bourne, Bond et al at the box office: "There's been a lot of work done both by Fox and by us, researching ideas for a film or a film franchise, within the same genre as Bond. But for us the energy it takes to do 24 episodes each year means around season 2 we decided not to really think about a film until we felt the TV series had run its course. We're aware that there's a lot of interest though, and we're thankful for that."

Scooby Doo star Freddie Prinze Jr, who plays former marine-turned field ops expert Cole Ortiz told fans he was a long time fan of the show: "I remember watching season one with my wife [Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar] and saying to her 'wow this would be amazing to work on, I would love to be in this show', but I had no hope of it happening because I was talking to pretend animals at the time."

Other things we learned from the 24 panel:

* Jack starts the season in a place we haven't seen him for a while - happy, with his daughter and granddaughter. Suffice to say it won't last.

* New cast members also include Katee Sackhoff (who plays Cole's fiancee, Dana Walsh, Chloe's boss in CTU. She said she was enjoying working on the show although, following her long tenure as Starbuck was finding her new role as Chloe's data analyst boss rather pedestrian: "I keep hinting they should give me a gun. Or two guns") and Slumdog Millionaire's Anil Kapoor, who plays President Hassan.

* CTU is back. In the trailer they showed it looks very shiny, a bit more futuristic, lots of glass and with an underground tunnel which means operatives can drive straight onto the main floor of the building from outside. Chloe is also back. She's not adjusting well to having a new boss.

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