Robert Zemeckis' Cast Away -- The TV Series (SPOILERS for Cast Away)

Robert Zemeckis is the producer of "Manifest."

And if you think about it, what he's doing here as a premise is making the end of his 2000 Tom Hanks movie into a TV series.

In Cast Away, Hanks leaves fiancé Helen Hunt behind in the US while he flies in a Fed Ex jet plane across the pacific. The plane crashes at sea, sole survivor Hanks makes it to a deserted island and survives alone there for years -- four, as I recall.

Hanks eventually rafts himself off the island and is picked up at sea by a passing ship.

Hanks returns home -- after four years away -- to find that he has been presumed dead, and that after struggle, Helen Hunt went on with her life -- Helen has married another man and has a toddler.

There is a lot of pain in this story, as "the people left behind" who went on with their lives are suddenly confronted with the people from their past, stuck five years ago in their intentions. And is it the right of the "returnees" to take back their lovers from their new spouses? Hanks decides "no."

Anyway, its pretty clear that at least two of the relationships on "Manifest" follow the Hanks/Hunt route -- new spouses, new people in their lives, the pain.

Zemeckis turned Cast Away into a TV show.

But it has other moving parts, too -- the ability of the returnees to hear voices that tell them to do things; the attempts of the government to find out what happened(I expect they will become villainous), the mystery of what happened, and who or what are behind it(aliens, or will Manifest dare to be a spiritual show?)

Much to see later -- but the strongest vibe, for now is: the end of Cast Away.