Peele’s ‘Twilight Zone’ plans to honour the original – but deliver a modern spin
THE WALL-spanning computers, thin spacesuits and caked makeup effects might look squarely of their Hollywood era, but the ‘60s aesthetic was never the point of “The Twilight Zone.”
The science- fiction anthology series resonates as timeless because its mission was always about the human condition, tested by the whims and mysteries of the surreal.
Celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, Rod Serling’s original series is often cited as one of the best television shows ever, largely because it cloaked allegories about humankind’s deepest fears and sins beneath the lab coat of science- fiction tropes. As narrator and creator, Serling toyed with senses of time, space and perception, playing like a behavioral scientist with themes of power, nostalgia, social politics and prejudice.
All that has proved immensely attractive to a team of 21stcentury producers, who are reimagining the classic series for modern times. Led by filmmaker Jordan Peele, their vision for a revived “Twilight Zone” will debut April 1, when the first two of the season’s 10 episodes (“The Comedian” and “Nightmare at 30,000 Feet”) become available on CBS All Access.
“We are living in an era that feels like an episode of ‘ The Twilight Zone,’” says executive producer and director Simon Kinberg, who is also behind this year’s “The Dark Phoenix.” “Every day, both nationally and internationally, things are happening that ( seemingly) could only have been created by the mind of wry, ironic science fiction. ... The absurdity, the surreality, the sliding truth and fiction of today’s world just feels very much like a ‘ Twilight Zone’ episode.”
To affirm the original show’s modern influence, simply look to Peele’s new horror hit, “Us,” which had a record- setting US$ 71 million domestic debut last weekend. For that film, Peele was inspired by the 1960 “Twilight Zone” episode “Mirror Image,” in which a female character eerily sees her doppelganger in a mirror and comes to believe that this evil double is trying to replace her.
CBS’ “Twilight Zone” revival similarly features original stories and characters, even as it pays homage with many Easter egg references to Serling’s series - honoring,
The absurdity, the surreality, the sliding truth and fiction of today’s world just feels very much like a ‘Twilight Zone’ episode.
as Kinberg says, “the spirit and the structure and the tonality of the original series.”
The producers, who are passionate fans of the original, needed to tackle two crucial questions to bring the revival to life: What about “The Twilight Zone” works in 2019 – and what most needed to be reworked?
“What we landed on was that in some very fundamental ways, ‘ The Twilight Zone’ isn’t broken,” says Win Rosenfeld, an executive producer on the new show and the president of Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions, which has a deal with Universal.
What the new show’s creatives appreciated was that the original series’ craftsmanship – from story to performance – was so often impeccable. The original featured a wealth of established and future stars, including Robert Redford, Robert Duvall, Carol Burnett and much of the cast of a follow-up ‘60s sci- fi hit, “Star Trek.”
The reboot will spotlight a diverse array of talent, including Seth Rogen, John Cho, Sanaa Lathan, Adam Scott, Kumail Nanjiani, Lesley Mirza and Shalyn Ferdinand – with Peele stepping into Serling’s shoes as narrator.
There have been several revivals of “The Twilight Zone” since the original series ended in 1964 – as well as a 1983 feature film – but none has yet matched what is arguably the original’s greatest strength: innovative and textured storytelling.
Serling penned 92 of the series’s 156 scripts, which exposed stories culled from science fiction and genre fiction to the masses, Kinberg says, including from such talents as Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson, Reginald Rose, Earl Hamner Jr., Ray Bradbury and George Clayton Johnson.
But the new show won’t rehash those same stories. “One thing Jordan and I had talked from the beginning of this process,” Kinberg says, “was about making something that would be a little disruptive.”
Kinberg says his meetings with Carol Serling, the show creator’s widow, only confirmed his belief that a revival needed to take creative license.
For the reimagining, he says, it became “almost a requirement to be bold and provocative rather than just do a karaoke version of something we all love.”
It was in line with Serling’s mission to tackle social themes, including war – he had seen action as a World War II paratrooper – and racism. “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” is an original episode that feels equally relevant today – as a neighbourhood is torn apart by paranoia over fear of the Other, its social glue proving a fragile adhesive.
At the moment, perhaps no filmmaker is better than Peele at addressing social issues through genre storytelling.
“Storytelling is an amazing mechanism (when) an issue’s too in-your-face,” says Kinberg, noting how Peele’s 2017 racial satire, “Get Out,” resonated with a broad audience.
The viewer can “see the world through the eyes of an AfricanAmerican man being targeted. You can relate to those characters ( and) find yourself inside someone’s life – living the issues in a different way.”
The new show’s producers note, too, that even as Serling and his fellow “Twilight Zone” writers tackled themes set in a dimension between “the pit of Man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge,” they seldom lapsed into pure cynicism, preferring that hope and wry humour follow their twists of irony.
The original episodes “tell a great, compelling suspenseful twisty- turny genre story, and they also deliver social messaging,” Kinberg says. “It’s the combination of those two things: You’re just being wildly entertained, but you’re also being informed and inspired.”
The fact that Serling, in that era, “smuggled that content into mainstream storytelling is almost unique in all of television.” — WP-Bloomberg
Simon Kinberg, executive producer and director