24: Jack keeps coming back

It seems the world is a long way from getting tired of watching poor old Jack Bauer have a succession of crappy days.

24 star Kiefer Sutherland, a co-executive producer on the show, has signed a new deal to make three more series of the smash hit clock-watching drama and the star will make the leap to executive producer - forming his own production company on the Fox lot. The deal is set to make the Canadian one of the highest paid actors in television.

Sutherland has been playing the overworked US government agent since the show’s 2001 debut and so far has racked up five seasons cracking skulls and terrorist cells in equal measure.

Despite the new deal only covering TV, Sutherland and his fellow producers - Joel Surnow, Robert Cochran, Howard Gordon and Evan Katz - will now look into the possibilities of transferring 24 to the cinema screen. The format will change so that the audience watch one day’s events over a two hour period.

There had been discussions about shooting taking place this summer but Sutherland says that if it’s going to happen, the action will kick off in 2007.

“It was really Joel and Bob and Howard realising that if we were going to squeeze it in during the break, we would have been rushing it,” Kiefer told Variety. “If we were going to do it, we would do it next summer. It's still a big 'if'. We would not go forward unless we thought we could do it right.”