Twilight Zone Movie Finds Its Writer…and a New Format. Will It Work?
The Twilight Zone still stands as one of the best sci-fi/fantasy offerings of all time, and its original episodes still manage to be relevant today. So, it’s no wonder that there have been several attempts at adaptation. Now, there’s a new one in the works, and the project has just hired its writer!
Warner Bros. has hired Christine Lavaf to write the screenplay for an unusual take on a
Twilight Zone reboot.
Rather than create a new Twilight Zone series, as was done by CBS in the 1980s and UPN in 2002-03, or do an anthology-style movie like John Landis did in 1983 in which four different stories were told by different directors, Warner Bros. has hired Lavaf to write one single story as a feature-length film.
This project has been in development since 2009, and has seen both writers and directors come and go. As of right now, there is no director attached to Lavaf’s script.
Lavaf is a veteran of Warner Bros.’ MonsterVerse — the cinematic universe pitting giant mutant monsters like Godzilla, King Kong and Mothra against each other — contributing recently to the
Godzilla 2 writer’s room. Her experience with the horror sci-fi genre will lend to her work with
The Twilight Zone, whose eerie blend of fantasy, horror, and science-fiction in its 1959-1964 run was revolutionary.
The original
Twilight Zone was a series of disconnected stories and cautionary tales, usually with a surprising twist at the end. The show was very much Serling’s vision, who executive produced, wrote or co-wrote 92 of the show’s 156 episodes, in addition to the stirring narration for which he was famous.
The series has been revived twice, with CBS in the 1980s and UPN in 2002-2003. John Landis directed a 1983 feature film adaptation of
The Twilight Zone, which was comprised of four different storylines from several directors. Warner Bros. newest project will likely be the first adaptation to try to forego the series’ famous anthology series format in favor of a single story.