THE WB'S GLOBAL FREQUENCY

SAN DIEGO -- John Rogers, executive producer of The WB's Global Frequency television series, said that all systems are go for the series to be a mid-season replacement for the network.

Appearing at the recent Comic-Con International at WildStorm's panel, Rogers said the pilot episode will shoot this month in Vancouver, British Columbia, and four episodes have been financed. Plans are for 13 episodes for the series -- based on the WildStorm comic created by Warren Ellis -- to be produced for the first season.

"I'm a comic fan and I have watched our stuff get kicked around like a red-headed step child for several years now with TV and movies," Rogers said. "There's no two ways around it. The way I got involved with Global Frequency is that two very good friends of mine had it for features and Warner decided to develop it as a TV show. I immediately had the same reaction that you did: 'Oh sweet God, that's going to be horrible.' So I knocked on the door and basically begged them to let me do it.

"We wrote a script. The script went first to Warren. Warren sent me back an e-mail, and the subject line said 'You bastard.' And I went, 'Oh no, he hates it.' And he said, 'I had my whole rant about how Americans screwed up another one of my things, but I'm actually very happy.'"

Veteran genre actress Michelle Forbes has been cast as Miranda Zero, the lead character in the series.

"The problem of Miranda Zero and the advantage of Miranda Zero is that she's unspeakably cool," Rogers said. "But it's a lot like having Batman around; everyone else looks like a schmuck. Miranda is never stumped. She always comes up with cool options. Which is great from a comic-book idea, but bad from an actual drama standpoint."

Aimee Garcia will play Aleph. "One of the reasons we cast Aimee for Aleph is that she's trilingual, and she's OK in four or five other languages," Rogers said.

One of the biggest changes will be the addition of two recurring characters, Josh Hopkins as Sean Ronin and Jenni Baird as Dr. Kate Finch.

"The way we've adapted the show -- if you donšt know how American television works -- you can't do the serial form that Warren did," Rogers said. "Unfortunately, people lock on to characters as opposed to plotlines on American TV. So we've basically introduced a sort of Mulder and Scully that appear on every episode: Sean and Kate.

"They actually go out and are our investigatory and sci-fi girl team. Aleph's always running the ops. Miranda bombs in when we needs to do cool spy stuff. And, also by keeping the cast split up, we can really develop the global feel. The idea that Miranda's in one place and the experts are in another. Also, we will be very heavily hitting the idea that you could be on the Global Frequency. Every episode, we're going to grab somebody. And a lot of fun for the writers has been what's been the weirdest, most obscure, more ordinary thing that we can grab to do a really interesting episode."

Ellis has played a role in the series and will be visiting the set.

"Warren's level of involvement is that he approves all of the stories," Rogers said. "He approved the stories and the script on the pilot, and Warren will be writing at least one this season."

With the concept's format, look for plenty of guest-stars, even though Rogers said he couldn't announce any yet.

"The book has a surprising number of fans," Rogers said. "And I have, from other shows I've done, a couple of cool actors lined up. And that is the cool thing about Global Frequency; we can bring in somebody for two or three times. If we like them, we can bring them back."

Their characters can also die pretty quickly, Rogers noted.

"I've told all the actors, their death scene's in the envelope. One of things we don't have in American TV is suspense. We watch TV and we know those people aren't going to die," he said. "(With) Global Frequency, some of these people aren't going to be walking away. Saving the world is a dangerous job. We want you to have the feeling that some of these people aren't going to make it all the way out."