Xander Berkeley (24) has joined the cast of The CW’s Nikita pilot, playing Maggie Q’s “Machiavellian leader.” Not much more info on that one, though it looks like yet another nail is put into the coffin of Day One with this announcement.

After several years of having superpowered characters without costumes, NBC has a pilot in the works about a regular guy who does wear one, and now they’ve cast a lead actor.

David Lyons (ER, Sea Patrol) will be playing the lead character of Vince Faraday, a disgraced cop who dresses as a superhero in order to clear his name and be reunited with his son.

Lyons was also recently part of NBC’s Day One pilot/series. His signing to something new sounds like yet another nail in the coffin of that unaired show.

Confirming earlier speculation here at KSiteTV that perhaps NBC has given up on Day One, The Futon Critic website is reporting that the show has been further cut and may not air for more than a “backdoor pilot” TV-movie.

No air date has been set, but NBC’s Angela Bromstad told the Futon Critic that it’ll likely be seen “towards the end of the season.”

“It will be a pilot where you could see where it could go in series but there will be a [resolution] at the end of the two hours,” she says.

Sci Fi Wire has additional comments from Bromstad about the decision. “We looked at after V launched and after FlashForward launched with a strong initial thing, we didn’t want to come on after that. As we sat down with [executive producer] Jesse [Alexander] and talked about more of the mythology, there’s just concern about sustaining that.”

Has Day One, the NBC series-turned-miniseries about a group of survivors after a disaster, completely disappeared, or has it just been delayed?

Originally the series was scheduled for NBC’s midseason schedule after the Olympics. When NBC announced their “winter schedule” it was nowhere to be seen. Day One has also disappeared from NBC’s press site. As far as I can tell, no chatter has been made about episodes filming beyond the pilot, though that could just been an assumption. NBC’s Day One page still exists but the associated video has “expired.”

Could a regime change, NBC’s falling fortunes, or the only-middling success of recent genre shows have killed it? Creator Jesse Alexander has been very silent on the matter on his @globalcouch Twitter, though he has made reference to pitching new projects. Aside from a Sargasso Planet reference, Day One hasn’t been mentioned in months.

Hopefully NBC will make some kind of announcement either way about the show’s future. With some transmedia tie-ins such as the Sargasso Planet fan site and the Facebook account of one of the characters, Zack Adamski (last updated on December 2), there seems to be a lot of good material to mine, and it sounded as though some other much-missed Heroes folks such as Jeph Loeb would be involved, which would only be a plus. It could also be possible that the network is delaying the series until next season – though it’s hard to say, since the network and producer have been very quiet.

Talk about Day One here in the comments or on the KryptonSite Forum.

Executive producer/writer Jesse Alexander talks about the change in schedule for Day One on his blog today.

Check it out!

One of the upcoming TV projects I’ve been very excited to see is Heroes producer Jesse Alexander’s new series, Day One which premieres on NBC next year.

He’s recruited some talented people for it such as Jeph Loeb, and since Heroes is wrapping for the season before the Olympics, it meant there’d still be a genre show on the network. (I still need to get into Chuck, obviously.)

NBC has announced they are cutting down their order to make Day One a miniseries, which could lead into an ongoing series later on. I sure hope this strategy works. I’m a little nervous already about V‘s four episode run in November, and don’t want another show-that-looks-good to be cut prematurely.

Here’s what the Hollywood Reporter had to say:

The order for NBC’s midseason drama series “Day One” has been reduced to the two-hour pilot plus two episodes.

The show, chronicling life on earth after a global catastrophe, will now air as a four-hour miniseries following NBC’s coverage of the Winter Olympics.

NBC’s scripted chief Angela Bromstad has repeatedly said that the network brass was envisioning “Day One” as “a big event.”

After examining the promo budget associated with launching a 13-episode midseason series, NBC executives opted to run the drama as a miniseries, with creator Jesse Alexander said to be on board with the decision.

The network is still leaving the door open for “Day One” to continue as a series after the four-hour spring run, citing the success of “Battlestar Galactica” on sibling cable channel SyFy, which also originated as a miniseries.

“Day One,” produced by UMS, stars Julie Gonzalo, David Lyons, Carly Pope, Adam Campbell, Thekla Reuten, Derek Mio, Addison Timlin and Catherine Dent.

The series was originally slated to air Mondays at 9 p.m.

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