Epilogue:
Another Decade, Another Dream

The Twilight Zone Forever

I n 2008, word filtered through of a new Twilight Zone movie moving through the planning stages, with Leonardo DiCaprio as executive producer and, over the next few years, rewrites reported from Jason Rothenberg, Joby Harold and Tony Peckham.

Matt Reeves looked, for a short time in 2011, like he was stepping in as the director, but he was lured away by the remake of Planet of the Apes (coincidentally or otherwise, another Rod Serling vehicle), while critics grew increasingly concerned with the touted story line—a test pilot speeding into the future—having very little whatsoever with The Twilight Zone in any shape or form. But, as CinemaBlend.com put it, “you can’t fight the power of branding.”

The movie was still wrapped up in preproduction uncertainties when, on December 19, 2012, Entertainment Weekly unveiled “the most exciting TV development news we’ve heard in awhile.” A pronouncement that, one is tempted to add, probably says more for the state of American television in 2012 than it did for the revelation itself.

CBS TV Studios in the very early stages of a new version of the classic series The Twilight Zone.

Bryan Singer (X-Men) is attached as executive producer. There is no writer and/or network attached at this time. So this project could fade away. But the development wheels are turning.

At the time of writing, neither movie nor television revamp has appeared; or, apparently, moved any further ahead than they were in 2012. But that does not mean that they, or something similar, are not even now being planned; nor that any future generation is likely to grow up in a world that does not know the true meaning behind those three simple words.

January 2015, for example, brought a fresh extension to the mythos when writer Mark Rahner and artist Edu Menna launched a new comic, Shadow and Substance, carved out firmly in the shadow of The Twilight Zone and kicking off with their own interpretation of the classic episode “Walking Distance.” “Stumbling Distance” opens in the present day, but takes its lead character back to his childhood in the 1970s, to shockingly powerful effect.

The process of taking an old tale, an old idea, an old concept, and updating it to the present day without losing its original impact is a difficult one to achieve, but early issues of this new kid on the twilit block do seem to have their heads screwed on correctly, as Rahner explained to Paste magazine.

The greatest challenge, he acknowledged, was to “take something with more than a half-century of familiarity, that’s seeped into every aspect of pop culture, and try to touch on what first stopped viewers in their tracks. No one could recapture the impact, but it’s still what you strive for. I keep Serling’s themes and attitudes close to heart, and operate a little like he did, getting inspiration, melancholy—and again, rage—from my own experiences and observations. And believe me, he’d have had no shortage of material today. In fact, I think his head would be reeling.”

And maybe that is the trick. To make Rod Serling’s head reel.

For there is a secret to the enduring success of The Twilight Zone; there is a single universal truth that binds not only the show, but also the comic, the magazine, the books, the movie, the scripts, the stars, the legends, the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror ride at Disneyland (and the accompanying movie . . . but really, don’t bother); and yes, even the action figures and bobbleheads together.

And you’ll find it filed under “G” for “Rod Serling’s Genius” . . . in the twilight zone.