'Minority Report' producer says series-order cutback won't impact Season 1 storytelling

NEW YORK, Oct. 17 (UPI) -- Minority Report producer Max Borenstein says FOX's decision to cut the series' first season from 13 episodes to 10 hasn't really affected the story he wants to tell.

"It hasn't actually had any impact on us creatively because our plan has always been to do 10 episodes. The three, which we hadn't really done any work on, they were always part of the second kind of order. It was more of a, like, technical kind of thing," Borenstein recently told UPI at New York Comic Con.

"We were always, and still are, airing our 10 in a row and then there is a break. And, so, that's exactly what we have planned and those two episodes -- 9 and 10 -- we're really excited about in terms of where it takes us in the serialized arc and this sort of, I think, very exciting ending, cliffhanger that it leaves us on."

The science-fiction show picks up more than a decade after the events that take place in the 2002 movie of the same name. The film was about a division of law enforcement known as Precrime, which apprehends people based on predictions from Precogs or psychics, who report offenses before they are committed.

Minority Report the series follows Meagan Good's and Stark Sands' characters, Detective Lara Vega and Precog Dash Parker, as they team up to prevent violence after the Precrime unit is dismantled.

Asked if he was drawn to the project because it is about balancing safety with people's rights -- a hotly debated issue in the United States today -- Borenstein replied, "That's one of the centerpieces of the show, obviously, the personal responsibility of this Precrime."

"The film was about the sort of allegory of the balance between freedom and security in this post- 9/11 world," the filmmaker continued. "That was very much what it was. So, this show is really about the personal side of that because we have a character who sees these futures -- three characters who do -- and they each respond in different ways and what's your responsibility given that and then for the character Vega, a cop, who, of course, as a cop, is going to have a viewpoint that edges more towards security -- and occasionally and certainly to start off -- someone who doesn't really see the tradeoff and, so, the arc for her that we're really going to be playing with and that we're going to be exploring through this first 10 episodes is the way in which her relationship with Dash changes her perspective on how far is too far in stopping crime. They see people committing murders before it happens and, as far as she is concerned, to start with, she'd just as soon throw those people behind bars like they used to do in Precrime. Ironically, the Precog who has had to see these things doesn't have this perspective and knows the future can be changed and is not sort of taking the fascist point of view, but that sort of dynamic of the two of them on these sort of different poles -- both of them wanting to stop people from dying, but taking a very different tactic for how to do it is sort of the centerpiece."

Minority Report airs Monday nights on FOX.