"Prison Break" To Expand Storylines Internationally

FOX's Monday night drama "Prison Break" has been renewed for a third season and the first details of its top-secret premise for the next year have begun to emerge suggesting the show will now play on a global scale.

The often implausible and outrageous, but endlessly entertaining "Prison Break" has been cleared by FOX for the 2007-08 TV season due to its solid performance in the second year averaging 9,01 million viewers on FOX Mondays.

Exec producer Paul Scheuring said his team had already mapped out much of season three when they received the firm pickup Tuesday.

"We already knew where we were going," he said. "Most of the major players are returning, but it will be a reconceptualization again, just like it was in season two."

"Prison Break," launched in 2005 as a drama about a man (Wentworth Miller) who stages a bank robbery in order to land in prison, where he believes his brother (Dominic Purcell) has been wrongfully convicted of killing the vice president's brother.

After a first season spent watching Michael Scofield, Lincoln Burroughs and a group of their convict allies breaking out of jail, "Prison Break" dedicated its second season to watching those same convicts on the run, trying to resolve a government conspiracy and hunting for $5 million hidden by famed skyjacker D.B. Cooper.

Season three's storyline will expand internationally; the show also plans to add at least four new cast members - two men, two women, none American. Casting likely will take place in May.

"The scope of the show will play on a much more global scale," Scheuring said. "More than half of the cast members will be back, and they know who they are, but I can't reveal more than that."

The drama will continue to shoot in Dallas next season (having moved there this year after filming the season one prison-set episodes outside of Chicago). Crews will also spend more time shooting in Florida and Louisiana, Scheuring said.

With 2 episodes left, the second season finale airs Monday, April 2 at 8pm on FOX.

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