IT’S ‘BREAK’ TIME

Fox reboots popular ‘Prison’ drama

‘P

RISON Break” seemingly ended its story for good back in 2009 when the series concluded by killing off one of its main characters, Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller).

So to pull off the new nine-episode revival, premiering Tuesday at 9 p.m. on Fox, the drama is relying on a tried-and-true soap opera rule: If there’s no body, said person isn’t really dead.

Yes, Michael’s alive. The genesis for the nine-episode revival in fact came when Miller and Dominic Purcell, who plays his brother Lincoln Burrows, were both cast on The CW series “The Flash” in late 2014.

“It was just Wentworth and I sitting around in between takes, talking about ‘Prison Break,’ the old days, how much fun we had on the show,” Purcell, 47, tells The Post. “We started talking about maybe we should bring it back. Then [we] went and saw the powers that be at Fox and they were on board ... before you knew it, it became greenlit.” The original series, which aired on Fox from 2005-2009, saw Michael die (off-camera), presumably of his brain tumor after breaking his wife Sara (Sarah Wayne Callies) out of prison. The new iteration picks up seven years later. Lincoln, who has fallen back into a life of petty crime in Chicago, is approached by a fresh-out-of-jail T-Bag (Robert Knepper), with information that suggests Michael is still alive and being held in a Yemeni prison.

“Lincoln and T-Bag absolutely despise one another and Lincoln’s first instinct is that he’s up to something and will kill him if it proves to be false,” Purcell says. “But the more investigating Lincoln does, the more he realizes there really is a possibility that he’s alive.”

When he approaches his sisterin-law Sara with the information, however, she is less convinced. Sober, remarried to Jacob (Mark Fuerstein) and raising the son she had with Michael in upstate New York, she initially balks at the idea of going down this potentially dark rabbit hole.

“She is somebody who, whether it’s a good idea or not, whether it’s healthy or not, will always help Michael if and when he needs help,” Callies, 39, says. “But determining that he exists and that he needs help all the way across the world in Yemen when they’re in Ithaca, it takes a minute.”

To create those Middle East prison scenes, “Prison Break” filmed on location in Morocco for three weeks. During the shoot, Purcell recalls suffering through brutal 100-degree weather, a bout of food poisoning and a gruesome on-set injury when an iron bar fell on his head.

“It split my scalp to the skull and broke my nose in three places. I was flown into Casablanca to get my nose re-broken and my head stitched up,” he says. “If you watch the episodes, you will notice my nose changes from episode to episode. I’m lucky to be alive, honestly.”

Thankfully, Purcell recovered and finished filming the entirety of the series, which also brings back original series stars Amaury Nolasco (Sucre), Rockmond Dunbar (C-Note) and Paul Adelstein (Paul Kellerman). But perhaps the most anticipated potential reunion will be that of Michael and Sara, the drama’s central love story.

“I always rooted for them. I always loved them,” Callies says. “There was a deference to one another’s brokenness and a tenderness with one another’s sharp points.

“I always just thought it would give them a real fighting chance if they could ever take a deep breath for five minutes and enjoy life.

“In a way, it meant a lot to me to shoot [this] because it kind of broke my heart, the way the show ended [before].”