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“Sure, we’ve talked,” Monaghan said in an exclusive interview while on the set of his new ABC series, FlashForward, on the Disney studio lot in Burbank, Calif., on Monday. “I’m friends enough with Damon that we just hang out.”

Monaghan said that rumors about his reappearance were stoked because observers may have misconstrued his relationship with Lindelof. “I think a lot of times recently there’s been talk of us hanging out, and ‘Why would they be hanging out other than talking about Lost?’” he said, adding: “We had breakfast one time, and I think that was the reason why a lot of these Lost rumors started.”

Still, Monaghan said, “I’m sure they would be keen to bring back certain characters this season.”

Charlie died heroically in the third-season episode “Through the Looking Glass.” Since then, he’s appeared a couple of times as a hallucination of Hurley (Jorge Garcia).

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A new sci-fi series airing on ABC, “FlashForward” tells the mysterious happening that caused people to see few months ahead of their life. Following the global event, people start dying one by one while operating man-controlled vehicles like cars and aircraft. The series stars Joseph Fiennes as Mark Benford, John Cho as Demetri Noh, Sonya Walger as Olivia Benford, Dominic Monaghan as Simon and more.

ABC is going full throttle in promoting this show by creating a unique campaign that has bizarre codes on printed ads. The black-and-white codes can be held up to a webcam and the computer screen turns into a 3D ad featuring photos from the show. Each of the photos will extend to clips when clicked.

“Once you watch all the videos, it’s a 10-minute experience,” Darren Schillace, ABC Entertainment advertising/marketing exec explained. “In the normal world, you’d never spend 10 minutes with a print ad.” Ads can be found on tech-oriented publications such as Wired, Popular Mechanics and some gaming magazines. The downloaded version can be obtained at JoinTheMosaic.com.

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Would it block his wife’s path to infidelity? Or would it guarantee it?

The underlying question — can you change your future? — is at the heart of ABC’s FlashForward (Sept. 24, 8 ET/PT), among the most-awaited new fall TV series, and one that some are calling the next Lost.

The premise centers on a two-minute, 17-second blackout that strikes the world’s population, followed by crashes, deaths and other disasters that result from the global unconsciousness. During the blackout, almost everyone has a vision — a flash-forward — six months ahead, to April 29, 2010. 10 p.m. PT, to be exact. Some are welcome, and some, including the wife’s vision of the lover, are not.

The task is to find out what happened and if the flash-forward prophecies will, or must, come to pass.

“We are the only species that thinks about the future,” says executive producer David Goyer, whose writing credits include Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. “It’s the blessing and curse of being human.”

Joseph Fiennes, who plays FBI agent Mark Benford, centers a team assigned to solve the blackout that includes partner Demetri Noh (John Cho); colleague Janis Hawk (Christine Woods); and their boss, Stanford Wedeck (Courtney B. Vance). They and the other characters, including Benford’s surgeon wife, Olivia (Sonya Walger), share their visions, but viewers see only bits and pieces at first, leaving twists and turns to be explored.

And “some people lie about their flash-forwards, so it’s a little misdirection happening,” Vance says. “It leaves the writers enormous latitude to tell stories.”

Of fall’s new shows, FlashForward most closely fits the definition of the serialized epic, a sweeping tale mixing action, suspense, mystery, romance and melodrama. “It’s a buffet,” executive producer Marc Guggenheim (Eli Stone) says. “To reach the widest audience possible, you need to have that spice. You have to have that wide variety.”

The best current example of the big, bold serialized mystery: ABC hit Lost. Fox’s 24 incorporates many of those elements, though each season is self-contained. Fox’s paranormal Fringe tries to temper its serialized elements, mixing long-term story with shorter, weekly ones. And ABC launches a remake of alien-invasion serial V in November.

The challenging format tends to demand more dedication from viewers, who may not want to make the time commitment, especially when there is no guarantee a show will reach its conclusion. It includes many recent failures, some of them noble, such as The Nine and Jericho, and even critically acclaimed successes Lost and 24 have hit bumps. NBC’s Heroes, which tries to balance serialization with stand-alone volumes, was a big early hit but has since slumped.

Quick answers to questions

Goyer and Guggenheim say they are making the show as they want to, but their customized format — many character stories that wrap up in one episode, quick answers to major questions and a simplified but not dumbed-down mythology — also may make it appeal to a broader audience and casual viewers. “It’s not that kind of show where if you don’t catch it at the beginning you’ll be lost,” Vance says.

At the same time, more devoted fans will be rewarded with numerous little clues and hidden references. “You’ll come across the true genius that is David Goyer, which is these Easter eggs,” Fiennes says. “There’s so much information that you could certainly go crazy trying to work it all out.”

As another viewing incentive, Goyer promises to resolve virtually all questions raised in the pilot by this season’s end. “We made the commitment very early on to answer some big questions and have some reveals very early. The audience will be surprised at some of the cards we turn over that early.”

ABC has an interest in series that are “something epic in scope but also really emotional,” network executive vice president Suzanne Patmore-Gibbs says. Characters must be at the core, she says, whether the serialized program is Lost,Grey’s Anatomyor FlashForward.

Goyer likes mixing large and small. “One of the things I like to do is take a big, broad subject matter and see if you can work it through this intimate prism with characters who humanize what would normally be what some would call an E-ticket ride. I think we were able to do that with the Batman movies, and I feel that’s what we’re doing here.”

He and Guggenheim are Lost fans, citing the Emmy-winning hit’s groundbreaking nature as one reason they thought ABC would be a good place for their series. ABC hopes Lost fans connect with FlashForward.

“Lost is ending this year and hopefully going out with a bang. There’s an audience base that’s going to be craving another nuanced experience, and it would be nice to win some of those audience members,” Patmore-Gibbs says. But she and others point out large differences between Lost and FlashForward, which was inspired by Robert Sawyer’s novel of the same name and in planning before Lost was created. (The TV series veers far from the book, producers say.)

“It’s not like we’re going to unearth layers and layers that are more sci-fi or layers and layers of mythology. So I think it’s easier to access in some ways,” Patmore-Gibbs says.

Walger, who has had a recurring role on Lost, considers it “a huge compliment being (mentioned) in the same breath as Lost. (But) I think the similarity begins and ends with big ensemble casts.”

FlashForward has a large, diverse ensemble — 11 series regulars, including Lost’s Dominic Monaghan, and guest stars from around the world — that opens the door to many individual stories, both professional and personal. To be a TV series rather than a movie, FlashForward had to be about more than blackouts and flash-forwards, says Cho, who also visited the future in this year’s Star Trek film.

“We couldn’t hang our hats on that big concept. It had to be about relationships and how it affected everyone’s lives. That, to me, was the hook,” he says.

On the largest soundstage on the Disney studios lot, one usually reserved for feature films, some character stories — and bits of police and medical drama — are intersecting at Olivia’s hospital when Mark and his FBI colleagues arrive. She has just saved a series regular who was injured in an attack resulting from their investigation.

“Mark has this guilt, but at the same time he feels vindicated that the clues are paying off,” Fiennes says.

The ‘what-if?’ element

Of FlashForward’s many elements, those involved with the series say science fiction may be the least. It also happens to be a genre label that turns off some viewers who might otherwise give a series or movie a try.

The show’s science-fiction component is limited to the blackout and flash-forwards, if that, the producers say, with Goyer suggesting the ultimate cause may not even be in the realm of that genre. He describes the look forward as a “what if?” rather than science fiction, akin to Scrooge’s glimpse of the future in A Christmas Carol.

While FlashForward’s characters see bits of the future, Goyer and Guggenheim know it all, as in how the series ends.

“In a post-Lost world, when you take a pilot to the networks, they ask, ‘Do you have any idea where it goes?’ ” Goyer says. “As a viewer, I would feel frustrated if the show creators don’t know where they’re going.”

They have plotted the series out, a difficult task when it isn’t known how long it will run. Goyer says they have loosely planned it for five seasons, could tell it in three, if necessary, or could “accordion it out” to run longer than five. Besides the ending, they say they know how the penultimate season concludes.

“They have had a destination in mind the whole time, knowing how hard it is when you don’t,” Patmore-Gibbs says. She notes Lost has benefited from having a fixed ending point, though no one suggested FlashForward might follow a similar plan.

The series can expand on a character or story if it breaks out in a big way. In the pilot, Benford encounters a kangaroo on a downtown L.A. street after the blackout. “It was something intended as a grace note. I didn’t expect it to get quite the response it has,” Goyer says. He and Guggenheim have made sure the Australian interloper will return.

“We’ve altered stuff along the way, as we’ve refined and gotten a better handle on things,” Guggenheim says. “Something happens in the 11th episode of the show that had been planned for Episode 18, or even later.”

But what happens after Season 1’s last episode? If FlashForward answers nearly all the questions in the pilot by the season’s end, what will be left for next year?

“I hope people ask that,” Goyer says. “In some ways, I can’t wait to get there. It’s going to be more exciting than Season 1.”

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Written and directed by Dublin-born Glenn McQuaid, an extension of his 2005 short “The Resurrection Apprentice,” the film begins with a James Whale-inspired creditsequence and regurgitates and transplants the tale of the Edinburgh-based body snatchers Burke and Hare and updates it with such delectable touches as zombies, aliens and ultra-widescreen visuals.

Holy “Bride of Frankenstein,” I think I’m going to like this, says your average die-hard horror film buff.

Dominic Monaghan, Merry hobbit himself, is Arthur Blake, apprentice “Resurrection Man” to veteran Willie Grimes (actor-director Larry Fessenden). The plot unfolds in lush sepia tones with acomical beheading and revolves around a lengthy confession Arthur gives to a giant Jesuit priest inquisitor.

The priest is Father Francis Duffy (“Hellboy” himself Ron Perlman sporting an Irish accent). The villains of the piece are the Murphy clan, whose leader Cornelius (John Speredakos) is a very unpleasant fellow. Among the other characters are Fanny Bryers (Brenda Cooney), a “wrecker” (i.e., one who lures ships to the rocks in a storm to pillage the broken remains) who aspires to be a “snatcher.” A sequence depicting Cornelius’ appalling Gothic childhood makes Tim Burton’s recent work pale.

From its tasty collections of false skies to its “classic age of horror” collection of cemetery backdrops and extras, “I Sell the Dead” is a lushly detailed throwback as well as a zombie-tongue-in-cheek tribute to horror films past.

Yes, that is Angus Scrimm as the Ernest Thesiger-like vivisectionist Dr. Vernon Quint. Dr. Quint offers Arthur and Willie 10 times the usual amount for “unusual corpses.”

Before you know it, a small island has become inhabited, if that is the word, with zombies that were packed in boxes aboard a sunken freighter. Now, there’s an “unusual corpse”-seeking body snatcher’s dream come true.

I can say with complete conviction that “I Sell the Dead” is the best body-snatcher film of the year.

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