Human Target at Comic Con

The panel for Human Target during Comic Con was primarily focused on the airing of the pilot episode, which introduced the characters Christopher Chance (Mark Valley) who is a unique private contractor/security guard hired to protect people in essence becoming a human target in their place. His business partner, Winston (Chi McBride), who was formerly involved in law enforcement and hired gun Guerrero (Jackie Earle Haley) round out the rest of the cast.

Human Target debuts on Fox mid-season

Without giving away too much away about the pilot, Chance is shown taking down a bomb-wielding bank hostage taker in the opening scene and the rest of the episode focuses on his becoming the human target for the designer of the Los Angeles Monorail line (played excellently by Battlestar Galactica star Tricia Helfer), who seems to have a price on her head.

Once the pilot finished airing, the cast (Valley, McBride and Haley) were introduced to the stage by panel moderator, Rich Sands from TV Guide, followed by Executive Producers Brad Kern and Peter Johnson, Series Creator and Executive Producer John Steinberg and Creator of the Characters in Human Target Len Wein.

During the short question and answer session, the audience learned that Mr. Steinberg’s reason for bringing the characters to the screen was because he “wanted to put an action hero on TV”, but that has proven to be hard, as it is “hard to make it real, look real.” It’s easy to put down the action in written word, but can prove to be difficult to translate into real life action.

Mr. Wein stated that he created the characters in 1972 and Chance was the very first character he ever pitched, but he sat on the story for 5 years before it got published.

The audience also learned the following:

• The character of Christopher Chance is darker than any character that Mr. Valley has played before;
• Mr. McBride believes that his character of Winston is the yin to Chance’s yang;
• Mr. Haley stated that he thinks Guerrero is an “interesting, fun character” and it “seemed like a really cool job”. He liked reading the scripts and is looking forward to “spending a lot of time with one character”;
• Mr. Valley explained Ms. Helfer insisted on doing her own stunts in the pilot so, of course “so I had to do my own stunts too”;
• Mr. McBride also stated that he enjoyed watching shows similar to Human Target, like the ones done by Stephen J. Cannell in the 1980’s and explained that Winston will be different from that of his role as Emerson in the now-defunct Pushing Daisies;
• A special cameo is made in the pilot (for which I do not want to spoil for the readers), but Mr. Steinberg stated he wrote this particular actor a “fan letter” about being in the show and the actor agreed much to Mr. Steinberg’s (and the rest of the cast and crew’s) delight;
• The show is filmed in Vancouver and the storylines will be focused on one set piece each week with an action film-type scene included in each episode.

To learn more about Human Target, which should debut during mid-season on FOX, you can visit the official website.