Feature: Lost

Executive producer JJ Abrams talks to us about the desert island drama everyone's talking about

Not been watching Lost? Then you’re missing out on one of the most successful and most talked about TV shows on the air… But now’s the time to catch up: Buena Vista is releasing the first season to DVD on September 6 in Region 1, while the first 12 episodes come to Region 2 on October 31.

Created by Damon Lindelof and JJ Abrams, the show charts the experiences of a group of plane crash survivors on a remote desert island. Cut off from society, they must learn to fend for themselves in an alien environment – one that’s populated by unseen monsters and polar bears, and one that could prove impossible to escape…

Now splitting his time between Jennifer Garner’s spy show Alias, Lost and directing Mission: Impossible 3, the brilliant Abrams recalls the genesis of this very special series…

How did you first come to work on the show?
I got a phone call from Lloyd Braun when he was at ABC saying they wanted to do this show set on an island. He said, ‘Could you please help put this together?’ I said, ‘Lloyd I’m three days away from turning in this other pilot that I’m writing. But yes of course I’ll try.’
In fact, I didn’t even like the premise of Lost. It wasn’t very interesting to me. But [creator] Damon Lindelof came in, we started talking, and I started to think, ‘If there’s a story about the island and if it very slowly becomes about where they landed…’ We were hitting it off so well, we had all these ideas. We wrote the outline in five days. It got greenlit. We then started to write as we were casting it. Eleven and a half weeks from that first phone call, we turned in the final pilot. It was a crazy whirlwind.

by Harry Thompson

Get the full interview and the Season 1 review in
Ultimate DVD #70

Image © Visual Imagination Ltd, Lost © ABC Inc
Feature © Visual Imagination 2005. Not for reproduction

Taken from

Ultimate DVD #70
September 2005
ships from Aug 31 2005
News-stand Price
UK £4.99 / US $7.99

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