The rumored fourteenth hour of Lost is happening! E!'s Kristin Dos Santos confirmed that there will be an extended Lost finale this season. The two-hour finale has become a whopping three-hour episode. Executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse felt that an extra hour was crucial to wrapping up the season four storylines, and ABC agreed. According to Kristin, the script for part two of the finale was 80 pages long. Imagine cramming all of that into one hour!

As I mentioned in my earlier post, the return of Grey's Anatomy and Ugly Betty to the Thursday night lineup does make scheduling this additional hour a bit tricky. The original plan was for the two-part Lost finale to air over two nights, and have all three shows end on May 22. TV Guide's Michael Ausiello is reporting that the Lost finale has been rescheduled, making room for a two-hour Grey's Anatomy season finale.

When Lost's post-strike episodes come out later this spring, they will air after Grey's Anatomy on Thursday nights. TV Guide's Michael Ausiello is reporting that ABC's new Thursday schedule will feature Grey's in its previous time slot of 9pm ET (in which Lost currently airs), with Lost in the 10pm time slot. These changes will take effect in late April, once both shows have completed new, post-strike episodes.

This announcement does impact Lost's current run, however. Instead of airing all eight pre-strike episodes in a row, the plan is for the show to take a month-long break after Episode Seven. Apparently the producers felt that this was a better way to separate each block of episodes. The first installment of the season will end in mid-March, and the show will return with new episodes in late April. If the new schedule is successful, we could end up with a permanent Ugly Betty-Grey's-Lost lineup on Thursdays. How does that sound?