NBC is bringing back Heroes for a 13-episode miniseries run later this year and announced that former Chuck star Zachary Levi will lead the cast.
No Zachary Quinto? No problem.
NBC announced last week that it will put a different Zachary at the top of the cast for its revival of the cult hit Heroes last this year.
Zachary Levi, the former star of NBC’s quirky spy dramedy Chuck, will lead the cast for Heroes: Reborn, a 13-part miniseries scheduled to premiere in 2015.
Creator Tim Kring and the network have said the show will primarily focus on new characters, although there will be at least one familiar face as Jack Coleman signed on in June 2013 to reprise his role as company man Noah Bennet.
Coleman is the only alum of the one-time ratings darling that originally aired on NBC from 2006-10.
The show drew an 11.9 share and a 14.4 showing in the all-important 18-49 demographic in its first season, but tailed off from there, finishing its run with a dismal 4.0 share for the series finale on Feb. 8, 2010.
Quinto said he’s simply moved on, according to Mashable.
“The idea of going back to a character that’s so archetypal and iconic is something I have a little bit of a hard time wrapping my mind around,” Quinto said last year. “I wish them 100 percent the best and even if I can’t be a part of it, I can’t wait to watch it.”
For Levi, it is his first project for NBC since the five-season run of the cult favorite Chuck ended in 2012.
Since leaving the title role as computer geek/super spy Chuck Bartowski, Levi has done some other television work and had a small role in 2013’s Thor: The Dark World.
Besides Levi and Coleman, no other cast choices have been announced.
Kring told Entertainment Weekly last year that the reboot will be set in a post-season four universe.
“The vast, vast majority are brand new characters, brand new ideas,” Kring said. “[Bringing back previous characters is] really only to give a sense of continuity and a tether to the original world. If it was all completely brand new, we’d miss certain elements that need to be there to give you that bridge to cross to something new.
“I approached Coleman because he was a character who had a spine through the series that allowed you to meet new characters. So he’s a character I wanted to make sure had a little part at the beginning of this thing.”
Many of Heroes original stars have successfully transitioned to other roles. Hayden Panettiere, the cheerleader who needed to be saved in order to save the world, now stars in ABC’s Nashville, while Quinto has reprised the iconic role of Spock in the rebooted Star Trek universe.
Ali Larter (Niki Sanders) has a lead role in the TNT series Legends and Masi Oka (Hiro Nakamura) plays a recurring character on CBS’ reboot of Hawaii Five-O.