Jack Bender Joins 'Alcatraz' As EP

Jack Bender is reuniting with his fellow Lost pals Elizabeth Sarnoff, JJ Abrams and Bryan Burk, agreeing to join the upcoming Fox series Alcatraz as an executive producer/director. Sarnoff, the executive producer/showrunner, co-wrote the series pilot with Steven Lilien & Bryan Wynbrandt, who are co-executive producing. Abrams and Burke are executive producing. Abrams, Burke, Sarnoff and Bender were linchpins on Lost, which ran for six seasons on ABC and won the best drama series Emmy in 2005 before wrapping its run last year. Bender, an exec producer on that series as well, earned one of series’ 12 Emmy nominations last year for helming the show’s finale. He is repped by UTA.

Alcatraz, slated to run Mondays at 9 PM midseason, centers on a San Francisco detective (Sarah Jones) involved in a grisly homicide case that takes her to America’s most infamous prison, where her prime suspect becomes an inmate who died more than 30 years before. Turning to an Alcatraz expert (Lost‘s Jorge Garcia), they discover that the inmate is not only alive but loose on the streets of San Francisco, exacting decades-old revenge and leaving bodies in his wake, having not aged a day since 1963. They dig into the history of the prison and discover that the killing spree is only the tip of a much more sinister threat. Robert Forster and Sam Neill also star. The series is from Bonanza Prods in association with Bad Robot Prods and Warner Bros Television.