Reboot Of ‘The Twilight Zone’ Incoming From Jordan Peele At CBS
CBS is adding a rebooted version of ‘The Twilight Zone’ to their ‘CBS All Access’ streaming service to sit along with ‘The Good Fight’ and ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ the company announced last night.
First airing in 1959 and created by Rod Serling, ‘The Twilight Zone’ is pretty much the grandfather of the modern sci-fi series. Each week, the seminal tv show took unrelated character and situations to tell one-off stories based on the paranormal or sci-fi, usually with some sort of moral or twist at the end.
The one thing people usually remember about the series is Serling’s voiceover introduction, which altered a little from season to season, but the final version went “You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension – a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You’ve just crossed over into the Twilight Zone.”
The show ran for 5 seasons in its original incarnation but was revived for ‘Twilight Zone: The Movie’ in 1983, then returned as a tv show in 1985 which ran for 3 seasons, then again in 2002 for a run which lasted 1 season.
This new version of ‘The Twilight Zone’ is said to come from Jordan Peele, best known for being one half of ‘Key and Peele’, and director of the critically acclaimed horror film ‘Get Out’. It would be produced by his company Monkeypaw, with Marc Ramirez (‘The Defenders’, ‘Fear the Walking Dead’, ‘Da Vinci’s Demons’) as showrunner.
This is the second time in recent years CBS has attempted to reboot ‘The Twilight Zone’. Their previous attempt involved X-Men’s Bryan Singer and Simon Kinberg with ‘Limitless’ & ‘Elementary’ exec producer Craig Sweeny, but fell apart after Singer & Kinberg returned to the X-Men franchise. With the current rise of dark anthology shows such as ‘Black Mirror’, ‘Room 104’, ‘Dimension 404’ and ‘Electric Dreams’, it’s no surprise CBS would want to try again to resurrect the brand that started it all.
We don’t have any further news on where ‘The Twilight Zone’ may land in the UK, but it seems extremely likely CBS would want to secure an international distribution partner as the did with ‘Star Trek: Discovery’, so we think Netflix is a very likely home. We’ll let you know when we hear more.
