Sutherland to shoot '24' movie this summer?

Jack Bauer could be hitting the big screen as soon as later this year, according to various reports.

The plans would involve shooting a movie version of 24 this summer, after the current fifth season wraps and before the sixth season airs in 2007.

Speaking to reporters at the winter TCA tour, lead star Kiefer Sutherland reiterated his intent to work on the project but admitted that it presented problems for producers Joel Surnow, Howard Gordon and Bob Cochran.

"It's certainly something that I've expressed an incredible amount of interest in doing," he said. "It is something that Joel, Howard and Bob and I have all talked about. One of the real difficulties, and Joel's expressed it in a number of interviews, is that any time they got really close to having a great idea for a film, we needed it for episode 18, so there it went."

"I love playing the character and it's something I care an awful lot about," Sutherland continued. "And I think certainly it is a genre of film that I have always loved as an audience person. I think there is an audience out there for that."

Despite admitting that the real-time aspect of the show was "presenting challenges" for planning the film version, Sutherland added: "I think there's always a way to actually deal with an idea of 24 as a film that would be completely separate from 24 the television show. And by that I mean the characters could be different. They could be completely unrelated, and I think that that would still be effective. Obviously, it's something that I would be very eager to do, and it requires a lot of other people to feel the same way."