Not content to leave 1960’s television shows alone, Bryan Singer is attempting to bring yet another black and white series back to the small screen. This time he’s partnering with CBS studios to develop executive produce and possibly direct a reboot of the classic Rod Serling show ‘The Twilight Zone.’

The original ‘Twilight Zone’ aired on CCS from 1959-1964. The freshness of the concept and the out of the blue ending twists of this anthology series made for a television show that was unlike any other at the time. Since then, several attempts have been made to replicate the magic of the series. In the 80’s, a film version of the show which featured 4 different stories directed by 4 different directors including Stephen Spielberg and John Landis. There was also a reboot version on CBS that lasted 4 seasons (which, by the way, included the Stephen King tale ‘Gamma’ which is currently in development to become a feature). Flash forward 20 years later and in 2002, the UPN network tried their luck to bring the series back to life which had Forest Whitaker (‘Repo Man,’ ‘The Last King of Scotland’) taking over the hosting role a la Serling.  This series only lasted for one season. Currently, there is another movie version of ‘The Twilight Zone’ in the works which Leonardo diCaprio (‘Titanic,’ ‘Inception’) is producing.

Singer’s deal is still in the early stages of development and a search is currently underway for someone to scribe the series once all the other deals with the rights holders of ‘The Twlight Zone’ has been finalized. The project has yet to find a home and has not yet been pitched to other networks, but it’s thought that the reboot series would stay in the CBS family (which includes the CW network) as CBS TV is involved and CBS was the network the original series was broadcasted on.

While I love the old ‘Twilight Zone’ series, one of the problems I’ve found with the television reboots is that it didn’t have the same charm as the original. Whether it had to do with Serling’s writing or maybe because the stories are so iconic, the replicated versions have somehow been lacking. Hopefully, Singer’s reboot of the series will go down better than his one for the ‘Munsters.’ If you recall, NBC passed on the series which was called ‘Mockingbird Lane’ and aired the pilot as a Halloween special instead.

It may be a little while before we see Singer’s version of ‘The Twilight Zone’ as he is currently in the middle of working on ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ which is slated to begin filming sometime next spring.

As usual, we’ll keep you updated with the progress of this project as news comes out.

In the meantime, what do you think about Singer’s desire to reboot the series?

 

Source: Deadline